Warner's Total HD Disc

[DennisMabry]

Oh brother.....another disc format, incorporating both HD-DVD, and Blu-ray content. As if consumers were not confused enough. @: I do not think a disc with a higher price tag is an answer to a format war. Personally I believe Universal players are the way to go.


http://www.avrev.com/news/0107/04.total_hd_disc.shtml

Dennis

 

[Ge Someone]

They hope the shops like having one format.
Also movie companies could switch to this without admitting they have bet on the wrong horse.
I myself agree with the thread starter ...

 

[JonUrban]

Morons. There should only be ONE format, period.

Greed is why there is not.

 

[atrocity]

Morons. There should only be ONE format, period.

But that horse is out of the barn.

On the other hand, if the content providers start selling dual-format discs and LG starts selling dual-format players, it's effectively a one-format world...in a really weird, roundabout and unnecessarily expensive way. Consumers will be able to buy and play high-definition discs without really worrying about the details, which, hopefully, will ultimately be a good thing.

I've been largely ignoring the whole HD thing because of the format war, but stuff like this suddenly makes me slightly more interested.

My biggest issue is simply that I find that just having an HD set offers the biggest, most obvious improvement. It does such a good job of upsampling or upscaling or whatever SD content into HD, that genuine HD seems a much more incremental improvement than you might think. IMHO, of course.

And I'm comparing standard DVD to broadcast HD, so maybe the comparison isn't entirely fair.

 

[neil wilkes]

As pointed out previously, there is yet another format that will quite possibly still pip the rest at the post.
EVD.
http://www.nmeinc.com/
Players? US$200 top of the range.
Fully backwards compatible.
Red Laser output, 20 to 40Gb per disc.
Free software players.
1920x1080p playback, up to 40Mb/sec output.
Authoring? See http://www.nmeinc.com/technology_authoring.aspx
plenty cheap as well, by all accounts.

Ignore the Chinese at our own peril, and the authoring is all designed & coded in the UK.

 

[winopener]

Neil,
what about MCH capabilities?

 

[timbre4]

You folks better read this; THD may be crazy enough to work (for now)...

Total HD contains all attributes of BOTH HD formats.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa131.html#daythree

 

[atrocity]

Morons. There should only be ONE format, period.

Well, Sony may be killing Blu-Ray before it really gets off the ground:

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/83552

 

[JonUrban]

Did Sony ever proclaim Beta as the "winner"? The frustrating thing about Sony is that through history, they have proven to create wonderful equipment and formats, yet they always seem to ruin the genious of thier R&D with the stupidity of their marketing divisions.

 

[leevitalone1]

For many years I have had a great respect for Sony and video. I must admit beta was a real good Idea. If not for the length factor it should have stuck. Better pq, BUT! They have gone too far this time! By pushing at the BR factor it has left me with a real bad outlok for anything else they will do in future! At least meet somewhere in the middle. I see by the polls folks are very aprehensive of inversting in a HD format. Me inc. I want HD dvds but see no sense in the 1st gen BR decksa Sony makes! No cd's? JC! At min. if it did sacd, for a the $$ (even if you got it) its just not worth it! There is an exsisting discussion on sacd vs dvd-a. I am so disapointed in sacd, and I took my super-bit copy of "5th Element" up to BB and I was so put off at the BR copy ! My SB looked better!! And with the studios backing BR. SOMEBODY got a real god hummer off Sony for that!! Disapointment and disolusioned in the navel of NYS

 

[roundhousequad]

For many years I have had a great respect for Sony and video. I must admit beta was a real good Idea. If not for the length factor it should have stuck. Better pq, BUT! They have gone too far this time! By pushing at the BR factor it has left me with a real bad outlok for anything else they will do in future! At least meet somewhere in the middle. I see by the polls folks are very aprehensive of inversting in a HD format. Me inc. I want HD dvds but see no sense in the 1st gen BR decksa Sony makes! No cd's? JC! At min. if it did sacd, for a the $$ (even if you got it) its just not worth it! There is an exsisting discussion on sacd vs dvd-a. I am so disapointed in sacd, and I took my super-bit copy of "5th Element" up to BB and I was so put off at the BR copy ! My SB looked better!! And with the studios backing BR. SOMEBODY got a real god hummer off Sony for that!! Disapointment and disolusioned in the navel of NYS

now I know i'm turning 50 this year can some one translate this please @:

 

[rusinurbe]

now I know i'm turning 50 this year can some one translate this please @:

I think what he is saying is he is dissappointed with Sony, and Sonys attatude, coupled the business tactics of large corporations @:


Or something like that.:ugham:

 

[bmoura]

Did Sony ever proclaim Beta as the "winner"?

Actually, the person at CES who talked about the Blu-Ray Disc having over 90% market share in Japan, all but one major movie studio issuing HD movies in the format and seeing it as the eventual winner in the High Definition Video disc format wars was not from Sony.

It was Andy Parsons, Vice President of Advanced Technologies at Pioneer - not Sony.

 

[JonUrban]

It would be nice if one was the "winner", and the other went away - but I don't think that is going to happen. Just like SACD/DVD-A on a smaller scale, I think the only thing that can help this market are true universal players - players that access all of the features from both formats.

Format wars are SO SILLY. The consumer loses everytime.

An interesting thing I am starting to see around here is that most stores I have been in lately, including Costco, have PS3's in stock! I was surprised about that, and the dufus at the Best Buy I was at told me that they had quite a few in the back and that they are not selling as they expected.

Not sure how to interperate that. He told me that the system flying out of the store is the Wii! For some reason, the XBOX 360's and PS3's have been staying in the store while the Wii's are moving.

Go figure!

 

[bmoura]

It would be nice if one was the "winner", and the other went away - but I don't think that is going to happen. Just like SACD/DVD-A on a smaller scale, I think the only thing that can help this market are true universal players - players that access all of the features from both formats.

Format wars are SO SILLY. The consumer loses everytime.

An interesting thing I am starting to see around here is that most stores I have been in lately, including Costco, have PS3's in stock! I was surprised about that, and the dufus at the Best Buy I was at told me that they had quite a few in the back and that they are not selling as they expected.

Not sure how to interperate that. He told me that the system flying out of the store is the Wii! For some reason, the XBOX 360's and PS3's have been staying in the store while the Wii's are moving.

Go figure!

Right. At CES, both camps in the format wars admitted that the main products that were selling at the moment are the PS3's and the Xbox/360 external HD-DVD drives - not the players of each format.

The result is that Sony has just cranked up production of PS3's. So they should be plentiful at all stores - not just Best Buy - in the weeks ahead.

I'm sure Toshiba is working with Microsoft to insure that the same is happening on that side of the format wars as well.

 

[El Guapo]

Right. At CES, both camps in the format wars admitted that the main products that were selling at the moment are the PS3's and the Xbox/360 external HD-DVD drives - not the players of each format.

However, for each Xbox HD-DVD drive sold you can be sure that you can count one for the HD-DVD camp; but for the PS3 such a conclusion might be a bit optimistic. I think there are a lot of people out there who buy it just for gaming, and who have no intention to use it as a Blu-ray player.

Personally, I'm quite a bit torn over which format I would prefer: on the one side there is Sony who seem to have quite an arrogant attitude, but with the Xbox you are knee-deep in proprietary Microsoft stuff. (Also a company which I'm not very fond of). From a technical perspective both systems are quite evenly matched, at least where the technical quality of the content is concerned; after all: they both support the same audio and video formats and codecs.

What is particularly important for me is that the HD-DVD is not using any regional coding (so far...). So from this factor alone if I would by a player right now it would probably be HD-DVD...

Best regards,
Oliver

 

[bmoura]

However, for each Xbox HD-DVD drive sold you can be sure that you can count one for the HD-DVD camp; but for the PS3 such a conclusion might be a bit optimistic. I think there are a lot of people out there who buy it just for gaming, and who have no intention to use it as a Blu-ray player.

Well, each side has their arguments. At CES, it was clear that both camps are counting on the gaming products to pull the formats along vs. standalone players. Quite a change from the DVD Video format's early days.

As to using the products to watch movies, the Blu-Ray folks point to a survey that 80% of the 1 Million owners of the PlayStation 3 as of 12/31/06 have or plan to use it to watch Blu-Ray movies - such as the one bundled with most of the consoles sold (Click or Legend of Ricky Bobby). So that gives them a potential base of 800,000 Blu-Ray disc buyers. We'll see in the months ahead how that plays out in the disc sales market.

In my case, I'm still on the sidelines re: both formats!

 

[El Guapo]

As to using the products to watch movies, the Blu-Ray folks point to a survey that 80% of the 1 Million owners of the PlayStation 3 as of 12/31/06 have or plan to use it to watch Blu-Ray movies - such as the one bundled with most of the consoles sold (Click or Legend of Ricky Bobby). So that gives them a potential base of 800,000 Blu-Ray disc buyers. We'll see in the months ahead how that plays out in the disc sales market.

The Blu-ray folks seem to point to a lot of surveys and market projections these days... Based on such studies they have already declared themselves the winner of the format war... kind of reminds me of politicians after the election before the votes are counted...

But you're right: we will see how this all plays out in the months/years to come. As it stands, the market share of the HD formats combined is currently negligible compared to DVD, it will be interesting to see if either of the formats will manage to make a bigger impact here...

Best regards,
Oliver

 

[atrocity]

He told me that the system flying out of the store is the Wii! For some reason, the XBOX 360's and PS3's have been staying in the store while the Wii's are moving.

My gamer friends seem to be excited about the Wii largely because the controller/controllers is/are so different and they're more interested in the currently available games. The Wii does not have any kind of HD capability, but at $250 it's also much more reasonably priced...when you can find one. Even a full month after Chr*stm*s, they're still pretty rare around here.

 

[El Guapo]

My gamer friends seem to be excited about the Wii largely because the controller/controllers is/are so different and they're more interested in the currently available games. The Wii does not have any kind of HD capability, but at $250 it's also much more reasonably priced...when you can find one. Even a full month after Chr*stm*s, they're still pretty rare around here.

The new controller concept and the comparably reasonable price is also what got me to buy one. I was lucky enough to actually find one shortly before Christmas. I did not own any gaming console before (if you don't count a pre-historic one I had as a kid ) I'm also not much into gaming on PCs anymore, somehow I could not find the time anymore.
But the Wii is really fun to play a game or two in-between. :banana:

Best regards,
Oliver