Ok I thought this should be in general discussion but if not then im ok with it being moved…
Now recently the HD war has been going tenfold with Movie companys backing certain media over the other. We have also seen M$ step in and throw some money around to get some to go with HD-DVD and more than likly in the background Sony are doing the same for Blu-Ray.
My question is who do you think will win ? is there something in the making that will dwarf both medias ? I have an idea and will post it a bit later… just want to get some ideas from everyone Ive been racking my brain recently as to what will be next as rumours are coming out that Toshiba is backing away from HD-DVD… rather confusing considering it’s there Disk :Plot:
There seems to be more media coverage on HD,
and i dont know enough about blue ray to really put an argument forward.
but from what i have seen from HD if you have the right equipment the quality is really quite brilliant.
Tis all i can say really.
Andy.
HD DVD is effectively dead, Toshiba have thrown in the towel (they’re the only hardware manufacturer). I’ll be keeping all my HD DVD kit as there are lots of good movies available on the format (and I have a fair few already) but expect most releases to be on Blu-ray in future.
Although early on it was too close to call, the swing has recently gone away from HD DVD and towards Blu-ray. While it isn’t final yet, I do think HD DVD has lost too much momentum to fight back now. So in this situation I wouldn’t buy a dedicated player in either format, though by default I’m in the Blu-ray camp with the PS3.
Actually, I wonder if that might be a sign of what’s to come. It’s been said Sony were keen to get Blu-ray in the PS3 to help the format take off. But if Blu-ray becomes dominant in the HD video formats, then would the reverse also be true? While you can get stand alone players, the PS3 is decent itself. As volumes go up, prices will come down, maybe accelerating the catch up with the '360.
As for alternative formats, I think there’s been news on a couple others but they’re rather niche. Without big name support they’ll probably never amount to anything significant.
Blu-Ray has only one problem on the horizon and that’s Microsoft. Blu-Ray=Java=Sun and there’s no way on God’s earth microsoft will entertain any sort of collaboration with Sun. Hence XBox has a HD-DVD drive not Blu-Ray.
With Microsoft obviously wanting to expand its interests by being a major player in the digital content delivery market this could be an interesting problem for both.
Ho-hum the very expensive HD-DVD player I own may turn white and sprout tusks then…
Speaking personally, I’m not bothered either way. Having just replaced my VHS tapes with their DVD counterparts, there’s no way I’m gonna spend more again on either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD until I have to. Early adopters always get stiffed at some point.
Where do Sun and Java come into Blu-ray? I thought it might have been more simple than that. Blu-ray = Sony. I don’t think Microsoft themselves are enough to keep the format alive short of using their pocket money to pay for a player for everyone on the planet. Actually I’m surprised HD DVD didn’t make more of an impact with being cheaper (on hardware).
As much of a geek I might be, I’m finding given the current pricing, I’d rather have a cheap DVD than a high res but expensive HD format. Hence I still own exactly one title on Blu-ray so far, and only cos it came with the player.
makes no difference to me at all, a crt 21" telly sees to that, and it’s very rare there is anything that in my view warrants the high definition view Telly and most new movies out are complete carp, so why bother tarting them up to look nicer when they are remakes of old plots :sigh:
Ok now this discussion started on a site I frequent the other day… and there are murmours that Flash media will be the next step and it makes sense to a certain point but I feel there is something a lot of people are overlooking… heres my post from that forum…
First of all I dont think Microsoft really care about the format war, they are backing HD-DVD because they want to slow down Blu-Ray and not because BR is a better format more because they are planning something themselves. Now I also think Toshiba is also in on this with Microsoft. But the big question is what ?
Flash media will happen and for the simple reason as its going to be really cheap and basically indestructable, But I do not think we will see Movies for sale in HMV on flash media. Flash media is going to replace HDD not DVD’s or not for a very long time anyway.
Now I really feal that downloads over the internet will not take off, and for the big reason that GB’s going over the internet cost ISP big money and so allowing each user to download 16gb of data of one film would be insane…
Now something I feel a lot of people have overlooked is another BIG player imo is Virgin Media, in the uk anyway. They have Fiber network covering a lot of the uk. Already are offering OnDemand TV and films off there own servers already on there own network… Now looking at it from another point of View Richard Branson bought a company that was in dier need of help and he has a lot of connections… Already we are seeing Warner TV eps on the ondemand service… so IMO what will be happening is Virgin signing big deals with Movie companys and films will be ondemand the same day as hard copy release…and users will pay £XX ammount for subscription and youll have access to the films… Virgin can do this if they play they’re cards right…
Now remember the fella that currently owns Virgin Media is one of the best business men imo…
so ye thats my idea of how the next few months/year will go…
Thanks for the info mojo. Realised there were lots of shenanigans early on but didn’t pay much attention to it.
Skipping physical formats, I have kinda wondered if a future “super youtube” might be the next delivery method of choice. As well as youtube, we currently also have VM’s on demand service, BBC’s iplayer and other similar ones. Although of these only VM is what I’d consider (standard) broadcast quality, I don’t think the bitrate to support a ‘good enough HD’ level is pushing the existing infrastructure too far.
As for flash, I think that’s a temporary storage medium myself. I think there will always be cheaper alternatives (per capacity) for long term storage. For example, I wonder if there will be much of a cost/capacity improvement if flash was write once?
With Sony controlling the hardware side of things, I don’t expect software prices to come down soon, as it will all licensed and they will surely have to pay a cut to Sony and pass that cost on to us, the viewing public… Same old, same old…
Ive been racking my brain recently as to what will be next as rumours are coming out that Toshiba is backing away from HD-DVD… rather confusing considering it’s there Disk :Plot:
Telly and most new movies out are complete carp, so why bother tarting them up to look nicer when they are remakes of old plots :sigh: