October 1, 2005 11:40 AM PDT
FAQ: HD DVD vs. Blu-ray
- Related Stories
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DVD dispute burns at PC makers
September 29, 2005 -
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September 26, 2005 -
All eyes on new DVDs' format war
July 11, 2005 -
Next-generation DVD formats rally support
January 6, 2005 -
Disney to support Blu-ray Disc
December 8, 2004
It didn't work.
Dell and Hewlett-Packard, the top two business partners of Intel and Microsoft, instead loudly reaffirmed their support for the other side, Blu-ray Disc. The latest volleys illustrate the continuing difficulties of trying to establish a single standard that can be used for videos, video games, software distribution and backup data.
Did HD DVD win the battle now that Microsoft and Intel voted in its favor?
No. Blu-ray has a formidable list of allies, and instead of lining up behind HD DVD, they offered a swift rebuttal. "I think things are more cloudy now for HD DVD than they were five days before," said Envisioneering analyst Richard Doherty. "I think this is probably going to cause some reflection at Microsoft."
DVD dispute burns at PC makers
Who's on each side?
Toshiba leads the HD DVD consortium, which also includes consumer electronics manufacturers Sanyo and NEC. Entertainment companies on board are HBO, New Line Cinema, Paramount Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Home Video.
Blu-ray's consumer electronics list is longer, with Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Pioneer and LG Electronics. PC makers that support it are Dell, HP and Apple Computer. Also on board are video game maker Electronic Arts and entertainment companies Twentieth Century Fox, Vivendi Universal and Walt Disney.
What are HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc?
Today's conventional DVDs can hold 4.7GB of information, but many want a higher-capacity successor to accommodate the larger data demands of high-definition video. HD DVD and Blu-ray both use blue lasers to read and write data; because blue has a shorter wavelength than the red used in DVD and CD lasers, information can be packed more densely on a disc and a single disc can hold more. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray drives are able to read current-generation DVDs.
It's no surprise why manufacturers want part of the industry. DVD player shipments, including next-generation models, will diminish from 113 million this year to 78 million in 2009, offset by a DVD recorder increase from 17 million this year to 74 million in 2009, said iSupply analyst Chris Crotty.
Each next-generation DVD format comes in single-layer and dual-layer formats. For HD DVD, that means capacities of 15GB and 30GB; for Blu-ray, it's 25GB and 50GB. Toshiba earlier expected HD DVD to arrive this year, but now the company plans to launch products worldwide in the first quarter of 2006. That's about the same time as the spring launch of Blu-ray, eliminating the early debut advantage. Blu-ray uses Sun Microsystems' Java software for built-in interactive features, whereas HD DVD uses a technology called iHD that Microsoft and Toshiba have worked on.
Why did Microsoft and Intel side with HD DVD?
The companies cited several reasons for their decision. They said the 50GB version of Blu-ray was "nowhere in sight," giving the 30GB HD DVD the capacity advantage for the time being. They also said HD DVD guarantees a feature they want, "managed copy," which lets a computer user copy a movie to a computer hard drive so it can be beamed around the house. The iHD software offers "greater interactivity," for example, letting a small screen with a movie director be overlaid onto the main video screen. HD DVD manufacturing is easier than for Blu-ray's BD-ROM, and its "hybrid disk" feature will mean an owner of today's DVD player will be able to buy a dual-format disk that can be played in tomorrow's HD DVD player.
What was Blu-ray's response?
In short, hogwash. They say the 50GB discs will arrive with no trouble in the spring, that HD DVD has no advantage in the managed copy area, and it has a hybrid disk technology as well. Neither side is winning the debate: "There are so many charges from both sides that it's very difficult to discern reality from propaganda," Crotty said.
What problems does the split cause?
Plenty. Consumers must gamble that investments in disc players and video collections are in a format that will prevail. And they'll be more cautious embracing digital entertainment technology: "You have to allow consumers to build their digital home over a very long time--a decade. You can't have this fiddle-faddle with standards," said Endpoint Technology Associates analyst Roger Kay.
Studios and video rental stores must either maintain duplicate inventory for the two formats or worry that one format might not have all the content consumers want. Electronics retailers have to explain the different standards. And the industry overall is faced with a more sluggish arrival of the next-generation technology at the same time other alternatives develop--including content that's downloaded directly or that's recorded onto hard drives built into set-top boxes and personal video records, Crotty said.
Can the two sides get together?
It's conceivable. Doherty observes that it took 18 months of struggle before two disputing factions--Super Disc and Multimedia CD--managed to compromise on a unified standard that became DVD, and the standard was the better for it. But at this late date, few see cooperation as likely. It's quite possible there could be no single victor, as happened with the rewritable disc standards DVD-RW and DVD+RW, both of which are used in the market. In that case, it's likely drive and player makers will build dual-format drives, a move Samsung has said it will make if no unification occurs.
See more CNET content tagged:
HD-DVD,
Blu-ray,
DVD,
entertainment company,
Blu-ray disc
But it's still only standard definition. Blu-Ray and HD DVD exist
to provide HDTV quality and beyond.
(However. On HDTVs with decent decoders, standard DVD looks
great, especially the SuperBit-type DVDs which maximize picture
quality at the expense of extras. I think the DVD industry is in
for a rude awakening. I think standard DVD is "good enough" for
most people with HDTVs; they're gonna have to discount heavily
to get people to buy into high-def DVD formats.
The big winners will be the computer folks, who get a data disc
with a staggering amount of storage space compared to today's
DVD-ROM/-/+R/-/+RW disc).
But it's still only standard definition. Blu-Ray and HD DVD exist
to provide HDTV quality and beyond.
(However. On HDTVs with decent decoders, standard DVD looks
great, especially the SuperBit-type DVDs which maximize picture
quality at the expense of extras. I think the DVD industry is in
for a rude awakening. I think standard DVD is "good enough" for
most people with HDTVs; they're gonna have to discount heavily
to get people to buy into high-def DVD formats.
The big winners will be the computer folks, who get a data disc
with a staggering amount of storage space compared to today's
DVD-ROM/-/+R/-/+RW disc).
Why not apply the i-pod philosophy to HDTV films. You go to the video shop and get a film downloaded onto your portable hard drive. No more bits of plastic cluttering up the house... no more whirring drives as they try to make sense of a scratched CD/DVD...
Well, that my 2 cents.
in a couple years solid state media will have more than enough room for a typical movie in the highest definition practical for the home. then the mfg's will be in a heck of a hurry to move us to the "next big thing". so, i think i'll wait this format war out, with the only exception of buying a large device for doing the nightly back-up of my network. for that, there's only one thing that really matters: max capacity.
mark d.
Why not apply the i-pod philosophy to HDTV films. You go to the video shop and get a film downloaded onto your portable hard drive. No more bits of plastic cluttering up the house... no more whirring drives as they try to make sense of a scratched CD/DVD...
Well, that my 2 cents.
in a couple years solid state media will have more than enough room for a typical movie in the highest definition practical for the home. then the mfg's will be in a heck of a hurry to move us to the "next big thing". so, i think i'll wait this format war out, with the only exception of buying a large device for doing the nightly back-up of my network. for that, there's only one thing that really matters: max capacity.
mark d.
That is most certainly the real reason why MS supports the other side. They hate Java.
That is most certainly the real reason why MS supports the other side. They hate Java.
I believe the article touched on the one factor that will decide the issue - which format will BLOCKBUSTER support? While they're a large corporation, they're not going to duplicate their efforts for very long. They'll pick the one format that they're getting the most revenue from, and abandon the other. When this happens, we'll know which one to buy. My guess is that this will happen by Christmas 2006.
I believe the article touched on the one factor that will decide the issue - which format will BLOCKBUSTER support? While they're a large corporation, they're not going to duplicate their efforts for very long. They'll pick the one format that they're getting the most revenue from, and abandon the other. When this happens, we'll know which one to buy. My guess is that this will happen by Christmas 2006.
broke, and I have to say that the one thing that's been a
revelation is just how many advantages HD-DVD actually has.
Like most, I saw the quoted BluRay specs and figured "well,
that's that". However, BluRay doesn't even have a dual layer disk
that's even close to manufacturing yet - they're all lab examples.
HD-DVD does, so - if you know anything about the concerns of
these firms that will actually have to invest in making these disks
- that's a pretty huge advantage.
Which leads to the next problem with BluRay: Cost. Building
these factories (or, more acurately, retrofitting the old DVD
factories) is going to cost north of a billion bucks! The HD-DVD
manufacturing technology is almost exactly the same as DVD,
and the numbers I've seen for the same task or retrofitting are in
the tens of millions. I think that should be foremost on anyone's
mind, because that money has to be made back.
I mean, I wouldn't worry about it if this were still the 90s, since
back then optical disks were about the best thing going for the
price. But - as someone mentioned above - flash memory is
poised to outstrip even BluRay's wildest capacity dreams in
about 2-3 years, and be cost competitive-to-superior. So why
waste the money (as an investor OR a consumer) on a media
format that's probbaly going to be eclipsed inside of 5 years? If
you're going to gamble on optical media at all, it seems to make
more sense to go with the cheaper, more ready to go option.
That sure seem to be HD-DVD to me.
Durability? BluRay's get their capacity advantages (theoretical as
they may be) from using thinner substrates and coverings. If not
for some 'secret sauce' coating (and who knows who goodit will
actually be) they would be much more fragile than DVDs and
HD-DVDs. My DVDs already scratch too easy!
I also read that Toshiba even has a triple layer 45GB version in
the lab, which cuts BluRay's 'theoretical' 50GB dual version's
advantage even further.
I don't know - I may be missing something, but when compared
to it's direct competitor AND with the likely direction high
capacity flash is going, this sure seems to make BluRay the most
over-hyped technology of the decade.
the tens of millions."
Can you provide some authoritative links describing these costs that we can publicly confirm with the manufacturers? You start out saying "tens of millions" for an HD-DVD upgrade, and in a later post, it's "$90+ million" - sorry, but that's close enough to nine ~ ten figures for me, and they still haven't manufactured any production discs _in_quantity_, right? Time _is_ money, so delays _do_ cost more. Even if you're precisely right about the initial cost differential, no one seems to have any problems coming up with the three billion+ bucks needed to build/update a silicon IC fab these days (even in the Third World - skilled assembly and maintenance techs cost at least as much as the robotic hardware), and the depreciation over billions of discs over upwards of a decade isn't that big a difference per disc (certainly not anywhere near $5 - $10 each). The funny thing about retrofits/upgrades is that they never quite cost as little, or work as well, as advertised. Anyone ever try to upgrade a PC between versions of Microsloth OSes without wiping everything slick on the hard drive? How about keeping up with DLLs and drivers for aging hardware? What about trying to add anything to a vehicle made in the last few years (many auto electrical systems now prevent you from substituting any 12 volt accessories, because they manage the load and exchange data over the power lines and/or fiber optics)? Now scale that experience up to an optical disc manufacturing plant, where a mote of dust rubbing against anything is like a boulder - I'll believe it when I see it.
Flash memory is going to approach the same limits in photolithography that the microprocessor and other device manufacturing processes are getting close to bumping into (somewhere around the 0.1 ~ 0.01 micron level) within the next 5 ~ 10 years. Like the PC business in general, we're starting to approach the asymptote of the basement for prices. Microsloth has demonstrated plenty of experience getting away with low-end slop with the PC masses by tossing its billions around (which used to be the PC masses' billions, BTW). That may not hack it in the wider consumer space that has a much higher expectancy of reliability - and Microsloth's track record with Swiss cheese riddled PC and embedded (DVR, cable, phone)software does not bode well for whatever is going to be fielded on HD-DVD discs (and remember, once the firmware is in a standalone player, it's baked in, no chance to send out Service Packs 1 - 99). The alignment of more content owners with Blu-ray (not BluRay, BTW) tells me that they trust Microsloth about as far as they can throw them - most of whom have already been burned by previous Microsloth failures, if not outright illegal activity (remember that not-so-little abuse-of-monopoly-power conviction a few years ago?). I'll take Java, with its time-tested built-in security model, strong programming attibutes from embedded to server apps/services, broad cross-platform professional developer community, etc., over the descendents of COM/DOM, ActiveX, DLLs, virii/worms/Trojan Horses/kiddie scripters, etc., any day.
Upper-limit capacity _does_ matter. Just ask any Betamax user, who couldn't make SLP-length recordings, how much they enjoyed the marginally higher quality of their format on the ultimately more-expensive media. If Blu-ray winds up dominating the market, I guarantee you they will have a significant cost advantage over HD-DVD in the long run. Of course, it's still a chicken-and-egg race until then, and with no clear visual quality advantage among the formats, larger capacity at roughly the same per-disk cost - guess what Joe Six-pack is going to choose, assuming equally inept marketing? I've become convinced that the weak link in consumer electronics is the 20-Somethings working in the aisles (in video stores or retail box stores), whose general lack of knowledge about anything technical is astounding (there are rare exceptions, but they soon finish engineering school and move on to much better prospects - assuming their careers haven't already been outsourced overseas). I wouldn't discount the support of Dell (HP probably only matters in terms of retail shelf space) in this equation, either. Both companies, and their other hardware partners, are going to be pumping these things out into consumers' hands like hotcakes at a flood zone relief station (been there, done that). I do wonder if my mailbox will fill with one or the other choice from AOL (and probably both!). Maybe that will be the ultimate arbiter of this race, especially since Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are going to eventually go the way of the dodo, as cable, satellite and broadband continue flattening and contracting the surface of the planet, so they may not to even get to affect the outcome of this game.
The other thing to remember about the capacity upper limit argument is Bill Gates' prophetic wild misstatement about "640KB will be more than anyone will ever need". Fitting the text of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on a single CD-ROM was supposed to be Nirvana, too. DVDs will seem as quaint in 10 ~ 15 years as 8-inch floppies do today (at least, being a volunteer at the Computer History Museum, I can still read those, if I need to!). 30 GBs won't even back up the average laptop computer today (not that there's more than that worth backing up, once you eliminate the Microsloth bloatware - hmmm, another reason they want you to buy more, smaller-capacity disks?). 100 GBs so I can take everything on my TiVo with me? Now, you're talking. There will never be enough capacity or bandwidth, and building for that higher upper limit in the future is a better investment than a more incremental (i.e., marginally less-risky, in the relatively short-term) approach.
Anyway, that's my buck-two-eighty's worth (two cents' worth, adjusted for inflation since date of "manufacture" ;) As Dennis Miller used to say, "But, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."
All the Best,
Joe Blow
broke, and I have to say that the one thing that's been a
revelation is just how many advantages HD-DVD actually has.
Like most, I saw the quoted BluRay specs and figured "well,
that's that". However, BluRay doesn't even have a dual layer disk
that's even close to manufacturing yet - they're all lab examples.
HD-DVD does, so - if you know anything about the concerns of
these firms that will actually have to invest in making these disks
- that's a pretty huge advantage.
Which leads to the next problem with BluRay: Cost. Building
these factories (or, more acurately, retrofitting the old DVD
factories) is going to cost north of a billion bucks! The HD-DVD
manufacturing technology is almost exactly the same as DVD,
and the numbers I've seen for the same task or retrofitting are in
the tens of millions. I think that should be foremost on anyone's
mind, because that money has to be made back.
I mean, I wouldn't worry about it if this were still the 90s, since
back then optical disks were about the best thing going for the
price. But - as someone mentioned above - flash memory is
poised to outstrip even BluRay's wildest capacity dreams in
about 2-3 years, and be cost competitive-to-superior. So why
waste the money (as an investor OR a consumer) on a media
format that's probbaly going to be eclipsed inside of 5 years? If
you're going to gamble on optical media at all, it seems to make
more sense to go with the cheaper, more ready to go option.
That sure seem to be HD-DVD to me.
Durability? BluRay's get their capacity advantages (theoretical as
they may be) from using thinner substrates and coverings. If not
for some 'secret sauce' coating (and who knows who goodit will
actually be) they would be much more fragile than DVDs and
HD-DVDs. My DVDs already scratch too easy!
I also read that Toshiba even has a triple layer 45GB version in
the lab, which cuts BluRay's 'theoretical' 50GB dual version's
advantage even further.
I don't know - I may be missing something, but when compared
to it's direct competitor AND with the likely direction high
capacity flash is going, this sure seems to make BluRay the most
over-hyped technology of the decade.
the tens of millions."
Can you provide some authoritative links describing these costs that we can publicly confirm with the manufacturers? You start out saying "tens of millions" for an HD-DVD upgrade, and in a later post, it's "$90+ million" - sorry, but that's close enough to nine ~ ten figures for me, and they still haven't manufactured any production discs _in_quantity_, right? Time _is_ money, so delays _do_ cost more. Even if you're precisely right about the initial cost differential, no one seems to have any problems coming up with the three billion+ bucks needed to build/update a silicon IC fab these days (even in the Third World - skilled assembly and maintenance techs cost at least as much as the robotic hardware), and the depreciation over billions of discs over upwards of a decade isn't that big a difference per disc (certainly not anywhere near $5 - $10 each). The funny thing about retrofits/upgrades is that they never quite cost as little, or work as well, as advertised. Anyone ever try to upgrade a PC between versions of Microsloth OSes without wiping everything slick on the hard drive? How about keeping up with DLLs and drivers for aging hardware? What about trying to add anything to a vehicle made in the last few years (many auto electrical systems now prevent you from substituting any 12 volt accessories, because they manage the load and exchange data over the power lines and/or fiber optics)? Now scale that experience up to an optical disc manufacturing plant, where a mote of dust rubbing against anything is like a boulder - I'll believe it when I see it.
Flash memory is going to approach the same limits in photolithography that the microprocessor and other device manufacturing processes are getting close to bumping into (somewhere around the 0.1 ~ 0.01 micron level) within the next 5 ~ 10 years. Like the PC business in general, we're starting to approach the asymptote of the basement for prices. Microsloth has demonstrated plenty of experience getting away with low-end slop with the PC masses by tossing its billions around (which used to be the PC masses' billions, BTW). That may not hack it in the wider consumer space that has a much higher expectancy of reliability - and Microsloth's track record with Swiss cheese riddled PC and embedded (DVR, cable, phone)software does not bode well for whatever is going to be fielded on HD-DVD discs (and remember, once the firmware is in a standalone player, it's baked in, no chance to send out Service Packs 1 - 99). The alignment of more content owners with Blu-ray (not BluRay, BTW) tells me that they trust Microsloth about as far as they can throw them - most of whom have already been burned by previous Microsloth failures, if not outright illegal activity (remember that not-so-little abuse-of-monopoly-power conviction a few years ago?). I'll take Java, with its time-tested built-in security model, strong programming attibutes from embedded to server apps/services, broad cross-platform professional developer community, etc., over the descendents of COM/DOM, ActiveX, DLLs, virii/worms/Trojan Horses/kiddie scripters, etc., any day.
Upper-limit capacity _does_ matter. Just ask any Betamax user, who couldn't make SLP-length recordings, how much they enjoyed the marginally higher quality of their format on the ultimately more-expensive media. If Blu-ray winds up dominating the market, I guarantee you they will have a significant cost advantage over HD-DVD in the long run. Of course, it's still a chicken-and-egg race until then, and with no clear visual quality advantage among the formats, larger capacity at roughly the same per-disk cost - guess what Joe Six-pack is going to choose, assuming equally inept marketing? I've become convinced that the weak link in consumer electronics is the 20-Somethings working in the aisles (in video stores or retail box stores), whose general lack of knowledge about anything technical is astounding (there are rare exceptions, but they soon finish engineering school and move on to much better prospects - assuming their careers haven't already been outsourced overseas). I wouldn't discount the support of Dell (HP probably only matters in terms of retail shelf space) in this equation, either. Both companies, and their other hardware partners, are going to be pumping these things out into consumers' hands like hotcakes at a flood zone relief station (been there, done that). I do wonder if my mailbox will fill with one or the other choice from AOL (and probably both!). Maybe that will be the ultimate arbiter of this race, especially since Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are going to eventually go the way of the dodo, as cable, satellite and broadband continue flattening and contracting the surface of the planet, so they may not to even get to affect the outcome of this game.
The other thing to remember about the capacity upper limit argument is Bill Gates' prophetic wild misstatement about "640KB will be more than anyone will ever need". Fitting the text of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on a single CD-ROM was supposed to be Nirvana, too. DVDs will seem as quaint in 10 ~ 15 years as 8-inch floppies do today (at least, being a volunteer at the Computer History Museum, I can still read those, if I need to!). 30 GBs won't even back up the average laptop computer today (not that there's more than that worth backing up, once you eliminate the Microsloth bloatware - hmmm, another reason they want you to buy more, smaller-capacity disks?). 100 GBs so I can take everything on my TiVo with me? Now, you're talking. There will never be enough capacity or bandwidth, and building for that higher upper limit in the future is a better investment than a more incremental (i.e., marginally less-risky, in the relatively short-term) approach.
Anyway, that's my buck-two-eighty's worth (two cents' worth, adjusted for inflation since date of "manufacture" ;) As Dennis Miller used to say, "But, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."
All the Best,
Joe Blow
Is there really a demand for it?
When DVD's came out, it was jumping to a whole new type of technology for videos (well main stream anyways, laserdiscs ever really hit it big time)
The jump in quality was pretty noticable, as well as being able to save a lot of space.
HDTV quality video just doesnt seem that impressive to me, while i'm sure in years to come cost will come down considerably, it seems like a "nice" thing to have, but really normal DVD's - espically on high quality displays look damn good already.
Software has barely even begun to take advantage of normal DVD technology (how many software titles have you gotten that come on more then one CD, often 3-4+, but theires no DVD version, except perhaps a super deluxe edition that costs 30+ dollars more?
Having 30+ gigs on a single DVD would definately be nice for Entire Seasons of TV Programs, but really, this whole next generation of players doesnt excite me at all, factor in the potential obselecence of a format, and I have no desire to even purchase a player in the next few years.
Is there really a demand for it?
When DVD's came out, it was jumping to a whole new type of technology for videos (well main stream anyways, laserdiscs ever really hit it big time)
The jump in quality was pretty noticable, as well as being able to save a lot of space.
HDTV quality video just doesnt seem that impressive to me, while i'm sure in years to come cost will come down considerably, it seems like a "nice" thing to have, but really normal DVD's - espically on high quality displays look damn good already.
Software has barely even begun to take advantage of normal DVD technology (how many software titles have you gotten that come on more then one CD, often 3-4+, but theires no DVD version, except perhaps a super deluxe edition that costs 30+ dollars more?
Having 30+ gigs on a single DVD would definately be nice for Entire Seasons of TV Programs, but really, this whole next generation of players doesnt excite me at all, factor in the potential obselecence of a format, and I have no desire to even purchase a player in the next few years.
Miserable failures sposored by America or large USA companies include NTSC (PAL is better in almost every regard) DVD+R (Reinventing the wheel - hence DVD-R disks are still cheaper and more widely used) and CDMA2000 for mobile phones - GSM wiped the floor with it...
- Dominate? LOL
-
by richto
October 3, 2005 6:29 AM PDT
- No you dont dominate. You usually choose inferior USA engineered solutions based on what your corrupt corporation sponsored politicians are told to vote for.
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Reply to this comment
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- Misinterpretation of the most successful market
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by David Arbogast
October 4, 2005 9:52 AM PDT
- Every technolgy you mention is available as a *consumer option* within the U.S. What does this mean? It means that multiple people with multiple ideas can create businesses, generate income and jobs, and grow the overall industry. No single solution is perfect for everybody, and choice is what makes America great. I definitely prefer this market to 40%+ tax payments that are used by organiations like the EU to subsidize business and eliminate competition.
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See all 128 Comments >>Miserable failures sposored by America or large USA companies include NTSC (PAL is better in almost every regard) DVD+R (Reinventing the wheel - hence DVD-R disks are still cheaper and more widely used) and CDMA2000 for mobile phones - GSM wiped the floor with it...