HD DVD returns from grave, smashes Blu-Ray

[XiaoSu Han]

Don't get too excited about that bit of news u DVD-HD fans. China is trying to isolate itself from rest of the world by "reinventing" almost any basic technology. They also tried it with Windows and Linux :arf: that won't mean a lot in the near future. They don't lack in manpower but they lack in finances and support from the rest of the world (who owns ALL the movie rights!). And by the time they get it working, their technology will be already old and outdated by others. They could only succeed in becoming a trendsetter and inventor of new technologies like Japan did. But the copy-cat path they are taking now by stealing technology from the west is not giving them the power to impose anything to the rest of the world.... neither to their own people who are greedy for western technology :coolgleamA:

Well the Chinese don't want or need to impose anything upon "the rest of the world who owns all movie rights", they just wanted to have a high resolution disc format that could be had for cheap so more people could afford it. And that's what they've got.

 

[Imran Farouk]

well lets think bout this here...
Blu-Ray isn't exactly cheap...
Yes the west may own a majority of the movie rights...
But think about markets like china and india where both of them could easily out profit those of the Western markets if sales caught on,

Producing cheap but high quality dvd's for the masses is what studios would find ideal, western ones especially, the idea of higher gross/net profit margins would definitely satisfy any studio's hunger for money.

During these economic times the ability to make more is always a good thing,

The chinese maybe 'copying' if you call it that but they are most certainly doing things 'for cheap so more people could afford it'...

100 HD-DVDs for $100 or 100 Blu-Ray DVDs for $150
Similar size, same quality...

Which would you pick if you were a studio head?

$15 - HD Dvd or $30 for a Blu-Ray

Which would you pick as a consumer?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

well lets think bout this here...
Blu-Ray isn't exactly cheap...

It's pretty cheap now that it's established. I'm paying less for Blu-Ray replication than I paid for DVD replication 6 years ago. The problem with Blu-Ray is on the consumer end. Studios, distributors, etc.. are trying to charge 35% higher prices for HD content. The same pricing applied to HD-DVD here in the states before Toshiba and the few HD-DVD supporters decided to slash prices as a desperate final act. The big deal with HD-DVD and why it's seeing a revival in the Asian markets is there's really no license fees to go along with it and retooling DVD press lines to make HD-DVD is a relatively cheap thing to do.

$15 - HD Dvd or $30 for a Blu-Ray

Which would you pick as a consumer?

The problem is that it's not going to work that way. When manufacture costs for pressed discs is under $0.30 for both disc types and even when you factor in the Blu-Ray royalty costs, which are now starting to be exempted from many products anyway, you're looking at maybe another $0.05 for Blu-Ray. The cost is in the content, the intellectual property.

If I feel like buying a Blu-Ray, I hit up the new release pre-order pricing at Amazon or I stop by Wal-Mart or Target and see which ones are on special. Both retailers have Blu-Rays for $15 or $20 regularly and they rotate which titles... The only titles that seem to be exempt from the special pricing are Disney and some new releases.

I bought the Bourne Trilogy Blu-Ray box a few months ago from Amazon for $42.99 w/ free shipping. HD-DVD will have a tough time making inroads back into the American markets. I think it will be like VCD all over again -- a format that failed here in the USA, turns out to be a major success in Asia and it finally sees a resurgence in the US within the import films market. I think HD-DVD will do the same thing, maybe.

In another 3 years, when DVD players don't exist anymore -- all players will be Blu-Ray players and they will be $35 for the cheap ones and studios are mostly only releasing Blu-Ray and prices are equivalent to current DVD prices, how would HD-DVD make sense?

Optical disc formats are most likely on the way out within the next 5 to 10 years anyway. Solid-state is the future, even for write-once, disposable, or manufactured content. I'll be really surprised if Blu-Ray, or any other optical media, holds onto the top consumer distribution format for more than another 5 years. I have a hunch the next format to come swooping in will be a variant of CF cards or C.Fast. 32GB to 2TB and more on a single card. Inexpensive to manufacture as static ROM. Probably cheaper to manufacture than optical media within the next 3 to 5 years.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I really think, in hindsight, that Microsoft used HD-DVD to rope-a-dope Sony into nearly bankrupting themselves with those hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes that Sony paid to the studios, and the $300 per unit Sony lost on the PS3, while all along Microsoft was concentrating on getting better game titles for XBOX and betting that harddrive downloads would eventually replace discs anyway. That's some Sun Tzu type of shit right there.

 

[Iannis Holwech]

The chinese maybe 'copying' if you call it that but they are most certainly doing things 'for cheap so more people could afford it'...

The Chinese HDDVD format CBHD is not "copying" in the way the Chinese are "famous" for.
It is a format developed in association with Toshiba and the DVD-Forum and was started as far back as 2003/2004.
The basis is the HDDVD format but with audio and video codec developed at Chinese Universities.

The strategy behind this by Toshiba by not just license them HDDVD was to give the Chinese something they wanted (their own HD format without high license costs to be paid to the west and help them develop something of their own; pride in own intellectual property (and maybe the hope that would make them be more heavy-handed on disc pirating of the format)

This was meant to be in exchange for when the time came when Toshiba would want to change the DVD licensing, where they would stop the production of RED Laser only DVD players and only allow Blue Laser DVD players (HDDVD/CBHD) to be made.

If they hadn't done this, and wanted to changed the DVD license, the Chinese manufacturers would probably just continued to make RED Laser DVD players as long as they could sell them (the Chinese produce 95% of all DVD player hardware in the world) and stopped paying the license fee. This would have both undermined the effort to emigrate consumers to HD optical, and tied Toshiba in endless court cases to try to stop them.

This was the strategic deal that was made, and this was also the main reason behind why HDDVD lost the "format war".
Because of this Sony managed to sell the support for the BD format to the Hollywood studios with a small majority, on basis of industrial protectionism of the Japanese industry for the future of HD Optical against the Chinese hold on SD Optical (DVD).

So in the end it was corporate concerns and industrial politics that decided what would be the next consumer format.
What would be the best for the consumers, a wider scope of content to be delivered on formats within the format produced on existing production equipment or that the best technical format ought to be chosen did not matter much in the end.

Toshiba has just applied for membership in the Blu-ray disc association (BDA) because they want to produce BD hardware. What is more interesting is that they come to the BDA as the only company that can offer the discontinuation of RED Laser players.
But I don't believe they will do that before they sit on the BDA Board of Directors.

Anyway, first we will have to see what the BD3D format contains and if our BD players can be upgraded or if we have to buy a new player to see BD3D.
If the last is the case, we look at a whole new format, which means they should rather rework the whole format to be more "future proof".

Buy the way, in the existence of HDDVD and the success of CBHD in China and thereby the availability to buy "readymade" low-priced Blue-Laser machines lays a great opportunity for a REDRAY format that far surpasses what RED has announced till now.
Just put available parts from DVDHD together with some processing power from the Scarlet&Epic camera, REDRAY compression and codec and you have a "low price" format that run rings around BD with little or no licensing cost for RED. :emote_hippie:

 

[Iannis Holwech]

I really think, in hindsight, that Microsoft used HD-DVD to rope-a-dope Sony into nearly bankrupting themselves with those hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes that Sony paid to the studios, and the $300 per unit Sony lost on the PS3, while all along Microsoft was concentrating on getting better game titles for XBOX and betting that harddrive downloads would eventually replace discs anyway. That's some Sun Tzu type of shit right there.

If you are right, Microsoft succeeded fairly well as Sony is expected to report a loss of 102 billion Yen at the end of this fiscal year ending march 2010. rogar-Smoke(DBG):