I don't think he's spent much time reading up on HD DVD, though -- he just said that dual-layer HD DVDs are still in the testing phase, that HD DVD cannot do layer changes, and that no movies have been released on dual-layer HD DVDs yet. That's pretty hard to screw up. Even if you spend all of your time reading about Blu-ray, HD DVD's capacity and the number of layers come up awfully frequently.

HD, the next laserdisc
 

I think that the whole HD-DVD/Blu-Ray conflict is now over and neither side is the winner. I have always been a first adopter, love my gadgets, love Hi-def gaming for my 360 but the idea of shelling out a-friggin-gain for films I already have just leaves me cold. Based on what I've seen of hi-def material from the net and played either via the 360 or a PC, I can give no justification to myself to buy an HD player so I can pay once again for a 'better' version of T2.

Does the clearer picture quality make it a better film? No. Will a turd of a film like Doom be less of a floater when I watch it it in Hi-Def? No, that film will suck as much in Hi-def as it does on DVD. For this consumer, and I suspect millions of others, DVD will still be king of the hill for many more years yet. Unless Sony and the other distributers do what I think they will do and stop making DVDs of the big blockbusters to force you all to go Hi-Def. It most likely wont happen.

I betcha 80% of the country's population still owns only a 4:3 tube that's only 32" or less and only has a stand-alone DVD player. By the time the majority has HDTV's, HD will be obsolete and then people will adopt holodisc as the true successor to DVD in the same situation that has already happened. After VHS came Laserdic, when that was starting to sell, DVD swooped in. History repeating itself?

When you first mentioned Holodiscs I thought you were joking. Then I googled it and saw that they are being worked on. Right now the projected price for one blank Holodisc is $100. If people are balking at $1,000 BD players that have $25 media, imagine how they would react to media costing $100 per disc, even if player prices didn't go much higher than $1,000.

Holodisc may become the next big thing, but not for another 10 years at least.

Which New DVD Format? Neither Just Yet-NY Times article
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/te...pc&oref=slogin

WELCOME to high-definition-DVD-FAQs.com, your one-stop info resource about the next generation of home movie equipment! Here you'll find all the frequently asked questions about the new DVD players ... and, better yet, the answers.

The first Blu-ray DVD player, Samsung's BD-P1000, arrives in stores next week. It costs $1,000, twice as much as the Toshiba HD-DVD player.

Forrester Research says that 17 percent of American households have high-def TV screens; no wonder the electronics industry thinks that DVD technology is ready for an upgrade, too. After all, the 60,000 movies already available on DVD may look good on your TV today — but they're not true high definition. You're not seeing the full color, clarity and contrast your high-def screen is capable of.

Your timing in visiting our site couldn't be better — the very first Blu-ray DVD player, Samsung's BD-P1000, arrives in stores next week. Read on for details on this revolutionary new player.

And now, on with the Frequently Asked Questions!

What about the format war?

Yes, there are two incompatible types of high-definition DVD players: HD-DVD (backed by Toshiba, Microsoft, Sanyo, NEC and movie studios like New Line and Universal) and Blu-ray (backed by Sony, Apple, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Pioneer, Dell and movie studios like Sony, 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate and Disney).

Most movies will be available in only one high-def format. Whichever you choose, you won't be able to play some of your favorite movies on DVD. Isn't competition fun?

Which format plays movies better?

The two formats offer equally spectacular picture and sensational sound. The image is much sharper than before, and the detail is incredible.

Video buffs notice the difference right away. Most people, however, would notice a difference only if an ordinary DVD and a high-def DVD were playing side-by-side on big screens.

What about features?

Both DVD formats let you summon pop-up, on-screen menus without stopping the movie, so you can switch languages or change scenes without a detour to a main menu. Nice.

Both formats make possible new kinds of DVD extras, like picture-in-picture director commentaries (rather than just audio commentaries). And Blu-ray discs can offer a Scene Search function: a clickable menu of the actors and the scenes in which they appear.

All of this is so far theoretical, however. We here at high-definition-DVD-FAQs.com have sampled 10 early HD-DVD movies and 7 Blu-ray discs — and not one of them offers any of these features. In fact, for the most part, the DVD extras aren't even in high definition. Clearly, the first order of business for the movie studios was just converting the actual movies to high-def DVD; filling in the blanks can come later.

Which is the best high-definition player?

You mean, of the two available so far?

The new Samsung Blu-ray player costs a cool $1,000 — twice as much as the Toshiba HD-DVD player that arrived last month. (Both players also play standard DVD's, even "up-converting" them to improve the picture on high-def screens.)

Samsung concedes that $1,000 isn't exactly pricing for the masses, and stresses that its new machine is intended for well-off early adopters. Which is sort of self-evident, isn't it? "The target audience for this player is whoever will buy it. ... "

Then again, that $1,000 buys you a number of advantages over the Toshiba; for example, the Samsung is substantially smaller (17 by 12.1 by 3.1 inches). Lighter, too. And absolutely great-looking: the piano-black, pseudo-lacquered finish of the front panel wraps around to form the entire top surface. The front panel glows with cool blue accents.

The Samsung also has memory card slots, so that you can watch your digital camera's pictures in high definition. They look really amazing that way.

In fact, Samsung must think they look really, really amazing; even in its fastest slide-show mode, each photo lingers on the screen for at least 15 seconds. We love our kids and all, but that's about 12 seconds longer than necessary.

I heard that the Toshiba takes more than a minute to start playing a DVD. How about the Samsung Blu-ray deck?

Only 30 seconds.

That's still not as fast as a traditional DVD player, though. And the Samsung introduces several-second pauses here and there — between the studio logo and the menu screen, between the menu and the start of the movie, and so on.

Samsung's engineers fill these intervals with what may be the world's worst "please wait" symbol: an hourglass icon, as in Microsoft Windows. It's our guess that most people would rather be spared the constant reminder that they've stuck a glorified PC under their TV sets. What's next — the Blu-ray Screen of Death?

The hourglass appears almost constantly during those excruciatingly slow photo slide shows. Worse, it appears right smack in the middle of each photo, often on a loved one's forehead.

I'm a videophile. Can you give me all the geeky specs that make my heart pound?

That's what we're here for!

The Samsung can connect to your TV using any of these connector types: HDMI, DVI (with an optional HDMI adapter), component cables or composite (RCA) cables. It hooks up to your sound system using coaxial, optical or stereo outputs, and understands Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby DTS and MP3 audio tracks.

The Samsung can pump out the highest-def high-def picture there is: a 1080p signal. (That means the image is formed by 1,080 horizontal lines, painted progressively down the screen.) Not many TV sets can even display 1080p yet, and there's not what you'd call a world of difference between 1080p and the Toshiba's best effort, 1080i (which is 1,080 lines, appearing as alternating, interlaced sets of 540).

But for those early adopters with $1,000 to spend, at least they know their system is futureproof.

How's the remote?

Hey, Samsung — we just paid you $1,000. How about tossing us a bone — like illuminated buttons on the remote? Ever heard of someone watching a movie with the lights turned low?

The Play/Pause and Stop buttons are larger than the others and distinguished by recognizable rubber bumps, which is a good thing.

On the other hand, the remote is filled with buttons that don't seem to do anything. (Some of them, like Cancel, are just a tease.) And there are no fewer than three different Menu buttons. (They correspond to the player's menu, the movie's menu and the in-movie pop-up menu.)

Should I buy one?

It's pretty early to consider a high-def DVD player. Keep in mind that for the next six months, the movie selection will be pitiful. The day the Samsung arrives, for example, a grand total of nine Blu-ray movies will be available, including "50 First Dates," "Hitch" and "The Fifth Element." Lions Gate will add five more the following week (like "Crash" and "Saw"), but even by the end of July, the entire Blu-ray library will consist of 24 flicks. (At least 130 other movies are slated for Blu-rayification, but release dates haven't been set.)

Besides, if you can wait until November, you'll be able to buy a Blu-ray player for only $500 — in the form of Sony's PlayStation 3 game console, which will double as a Blu-ray DVD player. Furthermore, rumor has it that dual-format players (HD-DVD and Blu-ray) are in the works for 2007.

But I really want it!

Are you sure? It's really awfully early. It's so early, even Samsung is a little sheepish about the glitches. "Blu-ray Disc is a new and evolving format," the user manual says. "Accordingly, disc compatibility issues with new and existing format discs are possible. Not every disc will play back."

I know, but I still want it.

Listen: What part of "It's too early" don't you understand?

If you buy one now, you risk making a huge investment in Blu-ray gear and movies (about $20 each), and then watching in horror as HD-DVD winds up winning the format war. Or vice versa. If that's your fate, you'll have to junk your whole investment.

In that case, don't forget to visit our sister site, Modern-day-Betamax-suckers.com.

Nice, thanks. It shows that for a lot of people, the cosmetics, usability and über-special features concerns are important factors, and -sadly for videophiles- you can't sell this on picture quality alone.

And there is at least one big inaccuracy:

They should have sampled Bourne Supremacy and Constantine.

Your history is a bit off. Laserdisc came out in the 70's. It was "the" format for high quality video for 20 years. It never caught on as a mass market item because it remained very expensive throughout most of its lifespan. This is not an issue with HD DVD. The players are already under $500 and will continue to drop and the disc prices are nearly identical to DVD prices. Blu-ray players are higher, but will also drop rapidly and their discs are already close to the same prices as DVDs.

HDTV ownership is growing much more rapidly than you think. HDTVs will outsell SDTVs this year and are already in 19 million homes. Holodiscs are nowhere near ready for mass consumption and won't be this decade. HDTV is growing fast and will be in 65 million homes by 2010. There is no reason to doubt one of the two HD formats will catch on in a year or two. They are backwards compatible and offer a pretty significant upgrade in picture and sound quality. I think regular DVD will be around for a long time, but when the HD disc players are the same price as DVD players many, many people with HDTVs will buy them to have the option of buying HD discs.

HD discs are not going away and will not be stuck in a tiny laserdisc niche.

I'm not even worried about what comes next at this point.

The PQ of HD-DVD is soooo good I'm not worried about improving the PQ yet again. This on a largish screen (90" wide) with a 1024x768 projector. The jump to a native 1080p resolution projector is the only improvement necessary, but from the quality I see already I'm in absolutely no hurry to go there.

I think that 1080p HD content we're receiving today on HD-DVD has reached a transparency to the source so good that anything more is not needed (certainly given the average sized screen in the home).

We're getting pristine PQ with zero artifacts (at least on HD-DVD, that is). I can critically watch an HD-DVD presentation looking for flaws and see none. I could never say anything close to the same for DVD.

Agreed. Best Buy and Circuit City both claimed increases in Flat Panel HDtv sales for the first quarter of this year. Walmart's electronics dept. is turning into mostly HD. HDtv sales will keep growing year and year.

And when HD players are the only thing on shelves, you'll have no choice but HD programming, which is a good thing. They'll drop in price and dvd players will be phased out.

The benefit there? You can still enjoy your current dvd selection because of the solid upconversion the Toshiba has to offer. And you have the ability to play HD content. A win-win situation in my book.

True, but we'll always have complainers. There are still people who complain when W*Mart doesn't have a certain VHS tape...

Rumor has it that Sony still refuses to use VC1 but there are other BD supporters who will be using it very soon. Stay tuned...

Some good quotes from Amir:

A few points might be useful here regarding whether HD DVD is getting better or not:

1. All the extras in HD DVD discs are still ported over as is, in MPEG-2. Moving forward, many will be encoded in VC-1, gaining a lot of space.

2. A number of discs you are seeing now, were encoded 6 months ago. We have made a lot of improvements in VC-1 since then. So the files take even less space and/or can provide better pictures.

3. There will be firmware improvements in some other key areas

4. We are just getting started with using the iHD subsystem to make the discs even more enjoyable to watch.

I wonder how full most of these HD-DVD discs are?? Does anyone know the average size right now??

Yeah. Actually, there was a posting that listed the sizes of each of the discs thus far on both sides. Dunno where it us right now. I know the BD sizes were mostly between 20-22gb. Supposedly they can't hold more than that.

Excellent points, and I'll add that there is a home video market that didn't really exist like it does now back in the LD era. Studios now view the home video release (DVD) as a huge part of the revenue stream for a film. The new formats are another way to sell us discs we already own.

From PC World:

It is hard to draw any conclusions from those numbers, though. Apparently the encoding was done months ago and the VC-1 compression is able to produce even smaller files now with the same PQ. Also the extras are still encoded using MPEG-2, so those will shrink moving forward.

According to amirm (MS guy on AVS), they can fit a 4 hour movie with lossless sound on the 30GB discs with PQ equal to what we're getting now.

Awesome news...thanks!

Well, 70mm and IMAX still look better than HD, so there's always room for improvement. Anyone who thinks that what we have now will be good enough is kidding themselves. I'd consider myself lucky if I can buy an HD-DVD player this year and not need to buy another format until 2016. At that point, I'm sure we'll see something new. If not Holodisc, then something. We'll all go through this again, but let's face it, this is fun! Even the back and forth between BD and HD is fun for the most part. And we're getting great HD content at the same time. I love it. And when we get Super Definition or whatever is next, I'll be right there for that, too.

It's called 4K, and it already exists. It is very close to 35mm film resolution already. Not 70mm, and certainly not Imax 70mm, but pretty damn good. Holodisc is just a way to fit more on a disc, I believe. Maybe they could work together someday.

Im sure that it is just a firmware update on the A1 to support this.


;)

Yea, when I get a 75 foot tall screen in my house, it might even be useful to have a 4k projector. But until then...

There's a limit on the size of display people can use in their homes. I think the jump from 1080 to 4k will be way into the point of diminshing returns.

Studios would be fools to release a 4k format to consumers. It really would be like handing over the negatives to pirates.

I know, it would be so f-ing awesome!!

Bingo. When we have a way to store 4K on a disc that can be played on some (as yet non-existent) compatible display device, we'll have something that is really transparent to the original film.

Unfortunately, that would only require four or five times the maximum storage capacity that we now have (somewhere around 200-250GB, I'm guessing), and a display device that would cost, at current levels, around $100,000+ ;).

Quick question - are all the HD-DVD's released so far single layer? Meaning there's no noticeable layer change during the films? And will we eventually return to that situation when they start putting out dual-layered discs?

I was hoping that'd be one of the things the HD discs would get rid of...

Everything but the combo discs (and I believe A View from Space with Heavenly Music) are on dual-layered discs.

As far as I can tell, since they released version 1.2 of the firmware, I do not notice the layer change.

The only freezes that I experienced before the firmware update were likely due to bad layer change.