SAN FRANCISCO — HD DVD, the beloved format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness. The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format.

There are no funeral plans, but retailers and industry analysts are already writing the obituary for HD DVD.

That really does mean HD DVD has died! Who here has bought an HD DVD player? I am pleased to say I have not. Still have the Betamax and V2000 players though!

Dear All:

Speechless... Was it ever an issue?  

 

 

Even worse:

http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSL1627196120080216

Toshiba are planning a swift exit from the HD-DVD market, meaning that there will no HD-DVD players in the future.

i'm glad the war is over, but not totally convinced by the winner.

I think bluray won because it has a cooler name (kidding)

This does make me ask the question as to why we are persevering with discs at all. Within 12 months we will have SD cards with huge amounts of storage. I know that panasonic have just released a 32 gig card. While it's only half the storage of Bluray it is only a matter of time before we have a 60+ gig card. While these cards are expensive now it won't take long for them to come down in price.

Cards are reliable. Obviously it is cheap to make products that can read them. They are small and robust. The format is well and truly entrenched and every computer can read an SD card.

I think if the electrical brands were to head in this direction it could be a good thing. Oh hang on, SD cards = no moving parts = no breakdowns = no replacing components = less money...

This then leads to the question of downloading HD content...

and the format war continues.

jazz



 

jazz:

i'm glad the war is over, but not totally convinced by the winner.

I think bluray won because it has a cooler name (kidding)

This does make me ask the question as to why we are persevering with discs at all. Within 12 months we will have SD cards with huge amounts of storage. I know that panasonic have just released a 32 gig card. While it's only half the storage of Bluray it is only a matter of time before we have a 60+ gig card. While these cards are expensive now it won't take long for them to come down in price.

Cards are reliable. Obviously it is cheap to make products that can read them. They are small and robust. The format is well and truly entrenched and every computer can read an SD card.

I think if the electrical brands were to head in this direction it could be a good thing. Oh hang on, SD cards = no moving parts = no breakdowns = no replacing components = less money...

This then leads to the question of downloading HD content...

and the format war continues.

jazz



 

Interesting

Jazz you may be right about Blue Ray winning with the name.....it's all about marketing....

The PS3 is a blue ray player...yes???  The best deal in blue ray pricing i think...

 

jazz:

This then leads to the question of downloading HD content...

People like to 'collect' discs. That's why people still buy CDs. Besides, I have a 24MB broadband connection and even this can be woefully slow on a Sunday afternoon or between 6pm and 11pm....the time when I'd want to download/stream HD content.

Blu-ray discs are still far too expensive. Hang around for a few months and you'll find the SD DVDs are discounted to less than £7. Blu-ray's are rarely discounted and we've already proved some of them are slightly ropey in quality (audio is always superb though). Certainly not worth paying more than twice as much as an SD DVD.

I can't imagine B&O installing an internal Blu-ray player, for these reasons. Who else ships a long-term TV with a Blu-ray drive installed? What happens if - as you say - the industry moves to another standard, SD cards or similar, in a year or two?

i'm not suggesting that HD downloads will be available in the immediate future but just look look forward as little as 5 years. I think by then most of the developed world will have extremely fast internet.

I totally agree that i don't see B&O building in a Bluray drive. I hope they don't. I would like them to make a stand alone though. Use the case for DVD2 (which is beautiful) and put a high end Bluray player in that.

jazz 

jazz:

i'm not suggesting that HD downloads will be available in the immediate future but just look look forward as little as 5 years. I think by then most of the developed world will have extremely fast internet.

I totally agree that i don't see B&O building in a Bluray drive. I hope they don't. I would like them to make a stand alone though. Use the case for DVD2 (which is beautiful) and put a high end Bluray player in that.

The problem with the Internet is not our local connection, but the bandwidth your ISP has allocated and the ability for servers to cope and stream with providing the content. We'll never have a system that enables true HD streaming that makes the service more effective than playing content from disc. The problem is that the more people that demand this kind of service, the more likely it will suffer from outages, streaming issues and more.

My 24MB connection is a classic example. Up until 6 months ago it was very speedy. Since O2 (the parent company) started offering their customers cheap broadband, it has slowed right down. This is despite me having a 1:1 contention ratio with my ISP.

Why has it slowed? Nothing to do with my connection, nothing to do with the contention ratio. It's purely the amount of bandwidth throughput the ISP has to share between people connected to it's service. ie the bandwidth it rents from a company such as BT. This is why, ironically, BT is often the 'best' broadband provider, simply as their service never slows.

Don't hold out for streaming 1080p HD content. It won't happen. Or, if it does start to happen, the demand for the content will cause too many issues for it to stream effectively. ISPs then will start to place local restrictions on your services, such as a download cap. Stream one 1080p movie and your bandwidth cap will be exceeed...

moxxey:

jazz:

This then leads to the question of downloading HD content...

People like to 'collect' discs. That's why people still buy CDs. Besides, I have a 24MB broadband connection and even this can be woefully slow on a Sunday afternoon or between 6pm and 11pm....the time when I'd want to download/stream HD content.

Blu-ray discs are still far too expensive. Hang around for a few months and you'll find the SD DVDs are discounted to less than £7. Blu-ray's are rarely discounted and we've already proved some of them are slightly ropey in quality (audio is always superb though). Certainly not worth paying more than twice as much as an SD DVD.

I can't imagine B&O installing an internal Blu-ray player, for these reasons. Who else ships a long-term TV with a Blu-ray drive installed? What happens if - as you say - the industry moves to another standard, SD cards or similar, in a year or two?

I too can't see Blu-Ray becoming as 'standardised' as DVD has become, but RE B&O installing a format in their TVs, they still installed DVD even thought it was clear it was going to be superceeded by something in the relatively distant future, only because they knew DVD would still be the standard format for quite some time.

People are still discussing if SACD is actually worth the investment compared to a standard CD, and having access to both Blue-Ray and standard DVD in both a pure B&O setup (50") and dedicated home theatre (100") I must say that I am not totally convinced that this a revolution wrt picture quality.

I see several identical issues between SACD/CD/MP3 and BlueRay/DVD/streaming/downloading.

I think one look at Apple's strategy with the tv-product-portfolio is a glimpse of the future. They are selling their solution from $229...

I have, just for fun (and pure stupidity), bought the same movies on Blue-Ray and SD-DVD and I found that very few movies provide me with a very improved picture (the price ratio is 3.5:1). Sure, they are better - but will the MP3-generation care?

This is a very interesting topic to follow.

Roger

I think there will always be demand for "hard" content, be it CD, DVD etc. Currently I have the option to download for free, purchase from iTunes or purchase on CD - I always buy the CD (although I immediately rip it for iPod use) and btw CD's have never been cheaper! I prefer to get something tangeable for my money that is'nt likely to vaporise in the event of a computer malfuction. Call me old fashioned if you will but I see this market continuing for the forseeable future, the chances of my granny streaming HD content is zero and even some of my pals are complete technophobes - they won't be doing it either unless its from an all in one, hardware box in the fashion of Sky etc.

 Re. differences in Blue-Ray compared to SD-DVD. They are definitely there if the content has been properly digitised/mastered to make the best of the format's capabilities. Sadly this is not always the case, similar to the CD / SACD debate - just because it is in that format doesn't mean it will be at the highest quality, unscrupulous studios can release any old tosh and charge a premium for it.

 As for your last point, I fear you may be correct. Video could go the way of MP3 where people just aren't bothered about the ultimate quality of the picture and more channels are prefered to better quality (how may Corrie / Emmerdale fans will demand 1080p, apart from jandty of course)

 

i also don't expect that we will be streaming hd video content but there is a good chance that we will be able to download content in a reasonable time.

If it was to download a hd movie now it would probably take maybe 3 hours. If that came down to 1/2 an hour i wouldn't go to the video store. if they can get it down to 10 minutes or less without DRM then that would be the end of dics. You could then copy your hd movie onto a big SD card to watch whenever you want.

discs are the past, and solid state storage is the future.

just my thoughts

jazz

 

Bear in mind that the Apple TV can start playing before the movie has finished downloading, so say you're going to watch a 2 hour movie which takes 3 hours to download, you could start watching after an hour of downloading...