Could the death of blu-ray be upon us?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

What the hell the the POINT of an HD format?

The point is NTSC is being phased out in the United States as of February 17, 2009, if the Wikipedia page is to be believed, which means that eventually you will need to buy a high-definition television. Oh, I guess you could get by with a converter for a while, but sooner or later you may wish to upgrade. On an HD television, the picture quality is much better. It shows more detail. This means news anchors and porn stars will need even better make-up artists to hide blemishes and lesions. But the point is, HD will become the standard. That's why we have two HD formats fighting for a foothold in the marketplace. It kind of reminds me of the DIVX/DVD wars, but DIVX was just stupid, that's why it failed.

I'm hoping this format war sorts itself out before the switchover as I don't feel like backing the wrong horse at this point.

 

[Geoffrey42]

What the hell the the POINT of an HD format?

The point is NTSC is being phased out in the United States as of February 17, 2009, if the Wikipedia page is to be believed, which means that eventually you will need to buy a high-definition television. Oh, I guess you could get by with a converter for a while, but sooner or later you may wish to upgrade. On an HD television, the picture quality is much better. It shows more detail. This means news anchors and porn stars will need even better make-up artists to hide blemishes and lesions. But the point is, HD will become the standard. That's why we have two HD formats fighting for a foothold in the marketplace. It kind of reminds me of the DIVX/DVD wars, but DIVX was just stupid, that's why it failed.

I'm hoping this format war sorts itself out before the switchover as I don't feel like backing the wrong horse at this point.

The mandated end of analog TV broadcasts to which you refer doesn't really have anything to do with the HD formats. Everyone is being forced to start using Digital TV broadcasts, but there is no requirement that they begin broadcasting in what would be considered a High-Definition format. The analog cut-off is just being forced to open up some prime broadcast spectrum that they consider to be ill used by analog TV.

As to the original question, why HD? As average TV screen size increases, and people increasingly convert to non-CRT TVs that actually have to deal with pixels, the image quality of standard 480i content begins to be unbearable. So, bigger TV, higher pixel density, better image quality, and then you need content to put on that screen. One method is upconversion, by which the TV (or a separate box) takes the 480i, and extrapolates the rest of the picture. The other method is to start with source material of a higher quality. Enter Over-The-Air HD broadcasts, Cable/Satellite Digital HD services, and the two competing physical media delivery options.

On a side note, I dare the US Government to pull off the Analog/Digital switchover by Feb'09. One of the audit branches of government just tore that whole project a new hole based on their lack of planning.

@Spencer: As per backing the wrong horse? For the analog cut-off, all you need is a conversion box, or a new TV. You don't have to pick Blu-Ray or HD-DVD just yet. And honestly, there's a lot of HD content available through OTA, cable, and satellite, to help stave off the urge to have a HD disc player.

 

[squirrelman42]

I work at a best buy and today I noticed something. I noticed how incredibly life-like blu-ray is and I thought, wow, that is eerie. I don't want that on my TV screen. It was even more clear than I see everyday life. Best Buy has a lot of sales on Blu-ray DVD's but I don't think that has helped people get over the 15 dollar vs 30 dollar hump per disk nor the fact that blu-ray isn't vastly different than HD. The human eye can only notice so much. It's exactly like betamax vs VHS spliced with the UMD disks of the PSP. Sony has to do more research and pay attention to that research if they want to succeed in the console wars. Putting in a normal HD player instead of Blu-ray may have been a better move so as to avoid yet another front in Sony's media war, but time will tell. Even if Blu-ray dies, it won't drag the PS3 down with it. Remember, it was only 1 generation ago when the PS2 was on top. In 1994 the Sega Genesis was on top and it took Sega 2 failed consoles (sega CD and Saturn) and then a before its time too little too late dreamcast before it was out of the console war. Sony still can come back if the PS4 learns from the mistakes of its predicessor and the Sony execs get their heads out of the ground to see what's happening in the world around them.

 

[raankh]

I would just like to point out that Sony does own IP for DVD and CD technologies.

They've been at the forefront of disc-technology for decades, together with Philips. They're probably still hoping that they'll be able to cut the price of the PS3 to the point where people will pick it up as a premium Blu-ray player.

Thing is, not that many have HD capable displays worth a damn anyway. Without a proper display, it's just wasted money.

 

[GrungeHead]

I hope blu-ray fails, then all the rich ass bastards mocking me for having 360 will have to listen.

 

[Chis]

There's been a cold war going on.
For any of us who remember this happening before; I fear that the Blu-ray vs HD is looking eerily like the Betamax vs VHS war in the 70's and 80's.
Any thoughts on the issue?
Edit: And if sonys format fails again, what will happen to the Playstation 3?

My closest experience with HD video is the - somewhat dumb, but fun - cutscenes from Command & Conquer 3. Watching them, even on my pretty average Acer AL1916W LCD, I could tell straight away that if someone were to bother to get this sort of video technology to us at reasonable prices, it WILL eventually take over. It does look better, fine details that were impossible to gauge on a DVD stand out with HD video. (I watched the making-of DVD a little later, and the difference in quality was embarrassing...)

But to be honest, I'm not really that bothered. Here's the deal:

Unlike the Betamax & VHS war, which is widely regarded to have been won by VHS because of its lesser cost and larger range of titles - whilst still being pretty good quality - we already have a video medium that is Good Enough. VHS was Good Enough. Audio CD's are still Good Enough for 90% of people (MP3's are a whole 'nother argument), and so too is DVD. I watch my DVD's through my PC to a VGA input on a 32" LCD TV. It's enough, really. I'm not in any hurry to replace this setup because it looks great to me. Hell, my father has a 50" plasma TV, with an old Sony DVD player hooked up to it via RGB Scart (!!). It looks fabulous.

So I think the point I'm trying to make is, this isn't really similar to the whole Betamax / VHS war. With an inexpensive video medium already out there that's good enough for most people... who really NEEDS HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? Wait till the dust settles, save your pennies, and make an informed decision. (I'm hoping that H.264+ makes its way onto DVD - using that codec, I'm sure you can fit quite a bit more video on a dual layer DVD than with standard MPEG2)

 

[McMo0^]

i'm gonna try and take a non technical view on this because for me its about how it looks and what it does that matters.

on a 1080p screen, i can't see the differnce in quality of a movie between blu-ray and hd-dvd. The difference is quite blatent when you stick a standard dvd on, even if you use upscaling.

I hope Blu-Ray takes off on the software front mainly though cos of the extra capacity. I still don't think the PS3 is taking that much advantage of said space, but then again no-ones using the full power of the 360 or ps3 yet.

As for online media... Let's face it, its that easy now to illegaly download media now, that it almost feels like you're being ripped off when you pay for it... I always like to have a hard copy of movies and music, but thats mostly cos i feel i'm cheating the artists out of their fair cut if i download.

In short, HD-DVD and Blu-ray at present provide a very similar quality movie, so i'd go with cheaper HD-DVD, but the Blu-Ray has a lot more potential, it just hasn't yet been realised.

 

[usernamed]

Nothing's going to happen to the PS3. If blu-ray fails then it just means that the PS3 will be using 'a Sony proprietary disc-format' for its games and you won't be able to buy movies to play on it (I have serious doubts over how many people do that anyway)

Personally, I hope blu-ray does fail. Sony always want to make things work 'their way or no way'. I don't want to use a format entirely controlled by Sony, rootkits would be the thin end of the wedge...

 

[Do4600]

To me, as well as to the average person, there's just not enough visible difference between Blu-ray, HD and other types of DVDs to make any comparison meaningful.

I have a friend who owns a 63+ inch flat screen highest def TV and I'm amazed how different it really is. You can actually see the compression fragments when you watch DVDs on it, like a bad streaming video online it gets blocky. So he just buys blu-ray now because DVDs look really low def and blocky on his TV, I guess for us mortals with earthly TVs there is no difference.

 

[shadow skill]

Its not the size of the tv its the distance you sit away from it. You also have to keep in mind that some soures are better than others.

 

[DangerousFat]

Betamax died because for whatever reason Sony pulled the plug on it.

All Blu-ray players, including the PS3 play standard DVD's as well.

Pirates! the porno is going to be on Blu-ray (if the porn arguement matters), with bloopers nonetheless (I want to buy it to see porn bloopers honestly! lol).

You'll all EVENTUALLY own hi-def tv's and at that point in time the quality of picture from a Blu-ray or even HD-DVD will matter to you.

Just my 2 cents.