Do we care about HD-DVD/Blu-Ray?

[zridling]

So far I haven't, being willing to let the formats hammer it out and wait to see who wins. Companies are split on the formats, although Microsoft has sided with HD-DVD. I'd love the extra disc space, but DVD is so cheap I don't want to go back to paying a $1/disc again.

[Carol Haynes]

Personally I can't really see the point - what ever they produce is only going to produce marginally better pictures for films and the rest of the stiuff will be crap like most of the extras they put on DVDs now. Unless the movie companies are going to start paying for some real WOW factor extras where is the incentive to move up to a larger capacity format.

Can't help feeling that home recording is going to be prone to huge numbers of errors too - no one actually lives or works in an hermetically sealed sterile environment and I can't see how the density of data will be acheivable constistently in a normal environment. Presumably they will have to build in some error recovery system to cope with all the glitches!

Whilst HD-DVD/Blu-Ray would potentially be great for backing up hard discs dual layer DVDs have never really captured the market that much - and the media is still ridiculously expensive (at least in the UK). I think it will be an awful long time before the prices drop enough to make them cost effective - and if the movie industry has their way theyu will stay at high prices as long as possible.

Final thought - if they do start pushing out anything useful I would tend to side with anything non-Sony - after their rootkit debacle I think everyone should boycott any format they come up with!

[vegas]

I've had a Hi-Def 720p projector for about 18 months now.  I love it and I have wanted more things to play in Hi-Definition because satellite and cable channel selections still pretty much stink.  But I actually have no interest in what they are peddling,  too many restrictions that can be implemented at ANY point in time down the road.  When all of the protections are cracked and everything can be controlled by ME, I would happily spend $15-$25 per title on various movies in such quality.  And no, I'm not some big pirate, as I have spent more money than I care to recall on DVD's (think big, really BIG).  I will continue to buy DVD's when I feel the 'Best' version has been released of a particular movie and NOT the first plain version that comes out, which is followed by a version with special features, which is followed by an extended version, then by a extended version with the features included, etc...  The industry just doesn't have my support or attention, and I try to make everyone I know as aware as I have kept myself, hopefully everyone will not cave in to this new RESTRICTED technology, until it can work in their best interest.  Instead of enabling media industries, which constantly position themselves to take every single penny they can get from every person in every which way.
/end rant

[mouser]

i agree with the above posts: i'd love more space for backups, but until they can get them really cheap, it's not a viable alternative to using an external hard drive.

[superboyac]

I'm already pissed that all those years I spent meticulously backing up my mp3s on cd's and cataloguing them, can now fit on about 30 dvd's as opposed to 200 cd's.  Now, with blu-ray or whatever, I can fit it all on like 4 of those discs.  But, actually, I'm planning on moving to a somewhat sophisticated hard drive backup system.  But that's off topic.

[vegas]

Whoops, did I miss the boat on that one or what.  I immediately read into the post from an entertainment medium POV.  As far as storage goes, it will be nice someday to be able to archive to these larger capacities.  But until the reliability is as good or better than dvd writing and pricing is on par per gig with dvd, I can't imagine investing any money in them.  By then it will be easy to decide which to use.  Holodiscs.  (hah)

[JavaJones]

Well, there are two sides to this story, clearly - media use and data use. I might give this generation of optical discs a miss as far as data storage goes, unless speeds ever get really high (even though the storage is greater, speed is not *that* much greater as far as I know). Reliability is also a very important and little talked about issue with increasing media density, as others noted. As far as use for media purposes - movies, etc. - I will have to see what new TV I end up with and whether it is compatible with the high def outputs I am allowed to use. We'll see how the respective movie studios handle releases in each format. If they are reasonable about it, if the quality is high, and the amount of extras attractive, then I might take the plunge. But so far the high cost and immaturity of the product and market are very off-putting.

- Oshyan

[Deozaan]

From what I understood, the whole Blu-Ray/HD-DVD thing was to provide movies in high definition. Obviously this technology is still expensive as Hi-Def televisions are still expensive. And it isn't just an HD TV you need to view HD (or so I've heard). They NEED the extra storage space to provide the higher quality video.

As for consumer data storage, as with all technologies, the discs will be expensive at first until production costs have been reduced and prices not just for discs, but recorders/burners are available to a larger majority of people. I don't have any statistics, but I think that the average consumer still thinks that DVD-RW drives are still prohibitively expensive or are just barely getting used to the idea that they aren't. Even still, Dual layer DVDs are kind of expensive. I spent about $15 for just 3 DVD DLs only a few months ago. Yet most movies and sometimes even the bonus discs that come with them are dual layer.

I would love to have a bunch of Dual-Layer DVDs but they're too much money for me right now. I backed up my relatively small mp3 collection about two years ago and it took me 11 CDs. My music collection has grown since then and I thought it would be nice to fit it all onto a few DVDs, But what would be even better would be to fit it all onto one DVD DL. And even DVDs have different, confusing formats. There's DVD+R or DVD-R.

Aside from all that, I heard a few months ago that physical media is going the way of vinyl records. Right now I say "Yeah right" to that but at that same time I heard about another format in the works. Holographic storage. These discs can hold almost 4 TB of data.

a 3.9 TB HVD could hold between 4,600–11,900 hours of video—just over one year of uninterrupted video at usual encoding rates. [Emphasis Added]

My memory is a bit hazy on this but I think they said that the technology should be widely available by 2010.

So, when it comes to entertainment media, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will make a difference, and Sony, who claim they made DVD broadly accepted because of their PlayStation 2 system, are trying to push their Blu-Ray format with the new PlayStation 3 system which sells for a ridiculous $700 later this year.

When it comes to consumer data storage, I'd probably be fine with DVDs--Dual-Layer or not--until HVD becomes more widely available.

[zridling]

[Deozaan ]:

...They NEED the extra storage space to provide the higher quality video.

The problem, however, is that the jump from DVD to HD-DVD/BR won't be nearly as noticeable as from VHS to DVD. Currently DVD allows most everything we want - director's cuts, commentary, featurettes, etc. — and with good quality video and audio. The extra cost of getting to Hi-Def isn't worth it to me. And besides, I'm tired of going out and replacing all my media and equipment just because five years have passed.

Let's just skip to the holodeck already!

[mouser]

Let's just skip to the holodeck already!

[jgpaiva]

@zridling: great post.
 I absolutely agree with you. It's stupid to be always replacing the hardware "only because 5 years have passed".
It is my opinion that in terms of movies (or music), the switch from dvd to hd-dvd/blu ray is meaningless. It just won't matter, since dvd's already provide enough space. The only difference is that one movie box won't come with 2 dvds (one with the movie, and another one full of crap in most cases), but only with one hd-dvd.

I believe there's only 3 fields that will win with this: backup storage, games, and mass illegal downloaders, which download every single crap they find in the internet, and spend half of their life recording dvds.

For me, the only reason that would make me switch is if i bought a new laptop at the same price i bought my current one, and it came with a hd-dvd recorder. And i'd be glad, only because i'd be able do to decent full-disk backups. (or maybe not, since at the time, the disk/hd-dvd relation will be about the same it is right now)

[Deozaan]

Let's just skip to the holodeck already!

I read today in the June 2006 issue of Popular Science magazine about the new 3-D Film capabilities. Apparently it is so much more amazing that previous technology, with no distortion that hurts your eyes or weird colors that your body rejects, and has so much more depth of perception that some famous directors (James Cameron, specifically) have promised to never direct another film in 2D again.

Strangely enough, the magazine had some links to their website which don't seem to work. In fact, the website says the current issue is May 2006. I did a search on the site for "3d movies" hoping to find some shred of evidence to back up my claims and all it returned (that seemed relevant) was this article from March 2005.

There was also something else cool about some strange rain in India in 2001 that was red, and some scientists believe there are cells that don't have DNA in the rain, suggesting that it could be alien life! Sadly, the link in the magazine also does not work on the site. What's the deal?

(also cool is that they made sunglasses for a housefly and a camel fit through the eye of a needle)