"Tech" Thread: Blu Ray, HD-DVD, Video Games, HDTV

[AndyDursin]

Samsung is onboard with a dual format player.

Also does not seem CASINO has really lit a fire for Blu Ray sales, as HAPPY FEET has sold more copies on HD-DVD. Could well be that certain movies will sell to the typical PS3 owner but more titles will sell better on balance with HD-DVD since people who buy a player of the latter are actually guaranteed to buy titles for it. The PS3 is still a game system for most owners and a Blu Ray player second -- or that's what it seems.

Samsung Electronics Co., LTD., a leader in consumer electronics and digital media technologies, and the first company to introduce a Blu-ray disc player will introduce a dual format High-Definition (HD) optical disc player in time for the holidays.

Samsung’s Duo HD player (BD-UP5000) will fully support both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats and their interactive technologies, HDi and BD-Java. With the Duo HD consumers can enjoy additional studio content such as trailers, director’s comments, more elaborate interactive menus and behind the scene footage. The new Duo HD joins Samsung’s next generation DVD line-up which includes Samsung’s second generation Blu-ray player available at retail this month. Together, these two models offer the consumer a strong line of High-Definition players to match Samsung’s award winning, and best selling, line of HDTVs.

From the same PR release...

As a member of the DVD Forum and contributor to the DVD Industry, we recognize that both HD-DVD and BD formats have merits. As such, we have decided to market a dual format player. Samsung is flexible to market a stand-alone HD-DVD player whenever consumers demand it. Our main concern is not technology but consumer choice” said Dongsoo Jun, Executive Vice President of the Digital AV Division at Samsung Electronics.

Looks like someone may indeed be jumping off the bandwagon just a bit?

http://www.koreanewswire.co.kr/en_read. ... =&rg3=&tt=

[Eric W.]

Also does not seem CASINO has really lit a fire for Blu Ray sales, as HAPPY FEET has sold more copies on HD-DVD.

Source for this? I can't find it anywhere myself.

Regardless of anything else, Casino Royale has been a heck of a nice seller for BD.

Looks like someone may indeed be jumping off the bandwagon just a bit?

Doubt it.

You hear this?

...

Exactly. You hear nothing. That's the same sound the LG dual player has been met with by the consumer: Sheep apathy. It's a bust.

So now Samsung's going to take a go at it? Good luck!

Samsung and LG are large and successful so they can throw out experiment bones like these at relatively little risk and little loss.


Samsung isn't jumping anywhere...for some reason they're going to follow their Korean bretheren over at LG into an experiment of futility: The LG dual format player is a complete bust.


What's strange about this is: Samsung still has plans for another dedicated BD player somewhere near the $500 or so mark by the Fall thereabouts, so I guess they felt like throwing an experiment bone out there or something.

I have a friend who works for Sigma Designs and he's told me that there will be no standalone HD-DVD player from Samsung at all. It will not happen.

Here's what he wrote me in regards to Samsung:

The next player is BD-only for $500. No plans to do HD DVD only player.

I know I'm probably the only around here that isn't supremely loyal to HD-DVD and bowing down to them without question, but see if you all agree with me on this at least:

Dual format players. Dual format combo discs...these aren't solutions. These are stopgaps that contribute to more customer confusion or at the very least, apathy.

This is so stupid: If Warner ends up putting out those THD combo discs...what does the guy on the street do? Buy a $1000+ combo player, buy a THD Warner disc, and flip a coin to see if he's in the mood to play the BD side that day or the HD-DVD side?
^^
All this because Microsoft keeps pumping money into HD-DVD and its 40 percent studio support and Universal Studios?

This is nuts! This crap doesn't make any sense and it sure as hell has nothing to do with caring about the consumers!

The guy on the street isn't going to touch any of this madness. Even some of the folks who went in early, like me? I'm not touching compromised combo stuff, either. No thanks.


These are the kinds of moves that continue to help Microsoft get what they really want: Keep the market deliberatlely split so NEITHER HD optical format truly takes off to make things sweeter for digital downloads, which of course they want you all to be kneeling at their altar for.

We need ONE format of solidarity ASAP. This stuff is nonsense and just adds needless delays to this stupid format war that should never have happened and just assures HD adoption is slowed down that much more.

Andy, you harp on this all the time and it's true: NEITHER HD format has blisteringly hot and big sales when you look at the big picture.

Stopgaps, dual format players, combo discs? It really is disheartening to see a SACD vs. DVD-A situation become that much more probable as time goes on.

If all this stuff really ends up coming to pass (a lot can happen in 6 months or so) then short term at least:

- 1 optical formats

+1 digital downloads/ Microsoft

Losers: Pretty much everyone.


P.S.

Let's get real here. If you COMBINED all the sales figures from BOTH formats: THAT total might be something halfway decent that makes a blip on the radar. None of this is.

Any enthusiast that really gives a damn about HD, regardless of whether your "loyal" to one format or another, should be getting quite irritated and impatient with anything that means a prolonging and protraction of a split marketplace and "format war" environment.

[AndyDursin]

We can go over the same arguments to no end, and already have. All I will say is what I've said from the very beginning -- the format that delivers the superior product for the superior price for consumers is going to prevail eventually. I have no other motive or interest in these respective companies other than noting simple economics.

Yes they're blips on the radar, no it's not good for both formats to continue fighting each other. It's simple math, though, what it costs for a company to produce X amount of HD-DVDs versus Blu Ray discs. It's simple math what one standalone player of HD-DVD costs versus a standalone Blu Ray machine. I know you think Toshiba is crap, that's fine, but the XA2 is at least well-reviewed (one of Sound & Vision's products of the year for last year) and the A20 works like a charm (I know because I have one). The first generation of anything is often glitchy, and now we're moving out of that. They are making it more affordable to people and by the end of the year you will see 2nd gen HD-DVD players widely available under $400, possibly even $300 that aren't the garbage you think they are. That's just my opinion but I'm sticking to that.

In the meantime there's nothing remotely close on the Blu Ray side except the PS3 (which continues to sell horribly) and the Samsung you mention down the road, which still will be more expensive.

I do believe if Sony wasn't throwing their might and muscle to push one of their own house-branded formats Blu Ray would be at a huge disadvantage in this war. As it is, I still don't believe it's going to be enough ultimately to overtake the fact that there's a competing product on the marketplace that's just as good visually, just as good on the audio end, and much friendlier in terms of cost for companies. Regardless of HD-DVD's comparative lack of promotion and push, it does seem quite intriguing to me that, even now, some of the HD-DVD titles outsell their Blu Ray counterparts like HAPPY FEET. Maybe blips on the radar, no doubt, but one corporation has been doing a lot more than the other to sell it, and IMO it hasn't been working.

That's my only bottom line, as it has been from the very beginning. If and when Blu Ray starts blowing HD-DVD away in terms of superior picture, sound, and extras, I'll be happy to revise my original statement. Until then, I fail to see why anyone should support the prohibitively more expensive format when both output great HD picture quality and sound (and if anything, I think HD-DVD's discs are, ON AVERAGE, superior to Blu Ray. At least Universal's catalog titles like THE THING, THE MUMMY, etc. are miles ahead of MGM transfers like TERMINATOR, SPECIES, and even the recent HOOSIERS, which I needed to re-assess. Now that I've watched the whole movie on the same set up as my HD-DVD player, I can tell you the Blu Ray HOOSIERS is pretty awful by HD standards).

[Paul MacLean]

I was back in Best Buy again yesterday, and looked at the newest BluRay demo.

I still wasn't very impressed. It is "sharp" but still had compression artifacts and lack of detail, and wasn't much superior to a standard DVD -- certainly not $800 superior. (And if they want to demo BluRay, they ought to use clips from something more visually arresting than Click! )

The demo's "split-screen" comparason between BluRay and regular DVD was outright fraudulent, as anyone with a passing knowledge of video post-production effects could tell the standard DVD image was merely diffused (and in fact looked inferior to the average DVD transfer).

I'm no electronics expert, I'm just a consumer, and I'm not committing to either format today. But if someone but a gun to my head, I'd go with HD-DVD. Its cheaper, and even Best Buy had more HD-DVD titles than BluRay.

[Eric W.]

I was back in Best Buy again yesterday, and looked at the newest BluRay demo.

I still wasn't very impressed. It is "sharp" but still had compression artifacts and lack of detail, and wasn't much superior to a standard DVD -- certainly not $800 superior. (And if they want to demo BluRay, they ought to use clips from something more visually arresting than Click! )

Agreed. They should use Casino Royale or one of the other top tier BD's.

One thing you have to remember: Store demoes and TV's on floors are in torch mode and aren't ever calibrated worth a damn.

If they're still using first gen Samsung players, chances are they never bothered to update the players with the firmare so that meand the excessive and faulty noise reduction chip is still wreaking its havoc.

All of these things add up and don't help matters.

The demo's "split-screen" comparason between BluRay and regular DVD was outright fraudulent, as anyone with a passing knowledge of video post-production effects could tell the standard DVD image was merely diffused (and in fact looked inferior to the average DVD transfer).

True. I've seen that demo. "Disingenuous" would not be too strong of a word. I actually laughed at the thing.

I'm no electronics expert, I'm just a consumer, and I'm not committing to either format today. But if someone but a gun to my head, I'd go with HD-DVD. Its cheaper, and even Best Buy had more HD-DVD titles than BluRay.

Interesting. This seems to vary from place to place as I've seen reports of some Best Buys having more/all BD and no HD-DVDs to everything in between. *shrugs*

[Paul MacLean]

Like I said, I won't commit this week.

And, all speculation and opinion aside, I would like to know why, after the debacle of the VHS & Beta war, and CD-R's defeat of Sony's Minidisc, we are in yet another format war, which, either way, will result a fair amount of people stuck with an orphan format.

I suppose another reason I would choose HD-DVD is because I'm sore at Sony because my parents went with Beta, and I later went with minidisc -- formats which ultimately had little support from other manufacturers (or the public). Its hard not for me not to perceive BluRay as another format which is mainly driven by Sony's vanity.

[AndyDursin]

Like anything else there are good discs and not-so-good discs in both formats, and it's true, with these store demos you just never know what's been calibrated and where and how.

What I DO know is they are both becoming affordable fast. The A20 works great and is $399 at a lot of sites. The Philips Blu Ray I have, apparently I got a steal on it, since it was $335 + ship. We'll see prices dropping on both, and it's all because of the format war.

Had the "format war" not happened, I'd bet prices on both software and hardware would be way higher than it is. At least that's the silver lining in this.

BTW that ROAD WARRIOR HD-DVD/Blu Ray disc is NOT gonna be a Special Edition...just an HD-transfer with a new commentary from George Miller and Dean Semler, plus an introduction by Leonard Maltin (yay!)

[Paul MacLean]

BTW that ROAD WARRIOR HD-DVD/Blu Ray disc is NOT gonna be a Special Edition...just an HD-transfer with a new commentary from George Miller and Dean Semler, plus an introduction by Leonard Maltin (yay!)

I hope its more exciting than Ridley Scott's intro to the GLADIATOR special edition -- "Um...this is not the directors cut; the directors cut is what ran in theatres. This just has some more scenes."

[Eric W.]

I hope its more exciting than Ridley Scott's intro to the GLADIATOR special edition -- "Um...this is not the directors cut; the directors cut is what ran in theatres. This just has some more scenes."

Right?

[AndyDursin]

This is from Video Business...which is decidedly neutral, I think we can all agree...and is interesting as it comes the week that standalone HD-DVD players hit the 100,000 mark. Sure, there are more PS3's out there, but not everyone who has them is buying movies the way an HD-DVD owner is.

My thoughts and feelings on the issue aside, it does seem apparent from reading this issue:

1. HD-DVD is anything but dead and...
2. Sony's insistence on pushing Blu Ray into the mainstream (where the market demand just doesn't exist right now) may have cost them dearly, as this article attests...

PS3 feels Blu

APRIL 13 | THE CORNER INTO which Sony Computer Entertainment painted itself by insisting on putting a Blu-ray Disc drive in every PlayStation 3 console continues to shrink.

This week, Sony confirmed growing suspicions that it is phasing out the low-end 20GB PS3 to concentrate on the more expensive 60GB model.

The low-end model—which, at $499, wasn’t all that low to begin with—was never introduced in Europe and has grown increasingly rare at retail in the U.S.

The official reason given by Sony for halting production is that consumers and retailers “overwhelmingly” favored the more full-featured 60GB model and that dropping the stripped down 20GB console simply reflects market demand.

“At launch, we offered two separate models of PlayStation 3 to meet the diverse needs and interests of our PlayStation fan base,” Sony spokesman Dave Karraker said in a statement. “Initial retail demand in North America was upwards of 90% in favor of the 60GB SKU, so we manufactured and shipped-in accordingly. Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America.”

An equally plausible reason is that demand for the PS3 has been somewhat less-than “overwhelming” in any configuration and that Sony is having trouble getting the cost down.

According to an analysis by research firm iSuppli, the 20GB PS3 had a total bill-of-materials of $805.85. At a retail price of $499, Sony was losing well over $300 on each unit it sold.

The 60GB model has a BOM of $840, according to iSuppli. At $599 retail, Sony’s loss is still substantial but not quite as ruinous as with the 20GB model.

A major reason PS3 costs so much to manufacture, of course, is the Blu-ray drive included in every console.

According to iSuppli, the drive is costing Sony $125 each, which is at least $100 more than a standard DVD drive would cost.

With such a high cost structure, Sony has essentially been unable to respond to low-end price competition from Nintendo’s Wii consoles and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

The unexpectedly strong sales of the Wii, coupled with Microsoft’s year-long head start in the market, has kept PS3 sales from ramping up as quickly as Sony was forecasting. And with lower than expected volume, unit costs have remained higher than planned.

At the same time, the high-def DVD format war has slowed sales of Blu-ray Disc players, which has kept the unit cost of Blu-ray drives higher than expected, adding to Sony’s PS3 woes.

With significant cost reductions pushed further into the future, Sony had little choice but to stop the bleeding and concede the low-end of the market to Nintendo and Microsoft.

SONY NOW HAS two options. The obvious strategy is to play for the long-term and concentrate on positioning the PS3 as a home entertainment hub.

The units certainly have the processing power to be much more than a game console or a high-def movie player, a point Sony has long emphasized.

But the market for that application is likely to develop slowly, and Sony needs to start driving software sales sooner rather than later.

It also faces formidable competition in the media center space from Microsoft, which recently introduced the 120GB Xbox 360 Elite, and from Apple Inc.’s Apple TV.

That leaves the second, more daring option: Retire the low-end PS3, let retailers burn through what’s left in the pipeline, then re-introduce a low-end model without a Blu-ray drive.

The idea isn’t new. Speculation that Sony would ultimately introduce a non-Blu-ray PS3 has been around since both formats were in development. But the drive to crush HD DVD made that a non-option. Piggy-backing onto every PS3 console was necessary to flood the market with Blu-ray players and drive down the cost of the drives.

Neither the next-generation game market nor the high-def DVD market has developed as expected, however. HD DVD has not been crushed, and the added cost of a Blu-ray drive has limited Sony’s competitive options in the games business.

The solution is obvious. Whether Sony is prepared to seize it, I can’t say. But retiring the 20GB Blu-ray PS3 model would be a good first step.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6433809.html

[Eric W.]

^^ They did officially retire the 20GB PS3.

http://www.dailytech.com/Sony+Confirms+ ... le6883.htm


Also:

This is from Video Business...which is decidedly neutral, I think we can all agree...and is interesting as it comes the week that standalone HD-DVD players hit the 100,000 mark. Sure, there are more PS3's out there, but not everyone who has them is buying movies the way an HD-DVD owner is.

Think again:

http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw ... wsignin1.0


http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw ... 112&page=1


^^ I'm amazed something like that would show up on an MS related website like this.

This MSN material totally flies in the face of the brazen viral marketing and propoganda that certain MS employees are doing on AVS, HTF, and certain other forums seemingly around the clock, on a daily basis.

This MSN writer must not have gotten the memo from Amir or something like that.


Highlights:

Content Is King, but Who Is King of the World?
If content is the key to winning the format competition, Blu-ray is in the lead.

and

Ultimately, the studios will go where their sales are. And in this respect, too, Blu-ray is showing signs of inching ahead.

and

By the Numbers: Next-Gen Disc Sales
The first inkling of how the formats measure up at the cash register came in the form of Home Media Magazine's report of Nielsen VideoScan First Alert data, which showed that Blu-ray has sold 100 units to every 98.71 units of HD DVD since the inception of both formats. And in early February the site High-Def Digest also reported from VideoScan, which tracks the point-of-sale data from all video-distribution channels (brick-and-mortar and online); the results showed that in the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin. (In that time period, 25 new Blu-ray titles shipped in January, compared with 11 titles on HD DVD.)

Much more recently, trade publication Video Businesscited industry sources in putting Blu-ray's margin at 2:1 for February too. According to Video Business, estimates show around 250,000 Blu-ray movies sold during February, compared with about 125,000 HD DVD movies. Total disc sales stand at 650,000 for HD DVD and 675,000 for Blu-ray.

The sales numbers even extend to one of the top-selling titles for both formats, Warner's The Departed. The Oscar-winning Scorsese film sold over 20,000 units on Blu-ray and 13,000 on HD DVD, according to Video Business's sources.

I'm wary of drawing conclusions based on these figures--numbers can be parsed in so many ways to tell different stories. But it's a telling trend that I'll be keeping a close eye on. The buying pattern appears to jibe with Sony's recent study, which shows that 90 percent of current PlayStation 3 owners have watched a Blu-ray movie, and that 80 percent of them plan to purchase a Blu-ray movie.

[AndyDursin]

Eric you are killing me. Is there any source you actually consider totally objective and not a shill for MSN, and please don't tell me The Digital Bits as Bill Hunt has been a Sony shill right from the beginning!

As far as stats go, the spin can go either way. HD-DVD had no promotion at all over the first three months of the year and almost no releases whatsoever from Universal. Meanwhile Blu Ray had 007, so obviously you would see a huge inbalance in those numbers for Jan, Feb and March. As these next few months progress, and Universal starts turning out content, you will see them tilt back toward what they were a year ago. We're already seeing that from Amazon sales and other sources.

For all the bluster on Sony's part -- and IMO their PR has been far louder in proclaiming "the war is over" than anything Toshiba or MS has turned out -- I don't see Blu Ray doing what it was supposed to be doing at this stage of the game. It has a lead but it's something that isn't insurmountable as both formats are blips on the radar as we've said before.

In the meantime I continue to hold that HD-DVD titles are as good, or in certain cases better, than what I've seen of Blu Ray, and the format's players are coming down, down, down in price. Just look at the hardware sales at Amazon. You may not think it means anything but find where a standalone Blu Ray player is versus a standalone HD-DVD player. It's a huge discrepancy there. I know you feel more confident in the backers of Blu Ray but I don't see the superiority of the format, regardless of whoever is backing it. You don't think Samsung doing dual-format is a big deal, but IMO they basically said if HD-DVD starts taking off they'd release a standalone player. Like everything else, once these formats start taking off, these people will go whereever the money is. Seems to me they weren't behind Blu Ray because it's really any better than it is Sony paid them off to be in their camp (if anything it's been technologically behind HD-DVD every step of the way so far).

Those Blu Ray PS3 numbers are just PR spin to me. The numbers about what percentage of owners are planning to buy a movie, or has watched a movie -- you're talking still about people who have it as a video game console first and a high-def DVD player second. It's why CASINO ROYALE sold big numbers but then other titles like HAPPY FEET sold equivalent or better on HD-DVD. 20 year old college guys will go and buy Bond but other titles are going to sell better on the format that has consumers who bought dedicated players for it. And in the big picture, Blu Ray is costing Sony BIG TIME. No matter what side of the fence you are on, there's no doubt the PS3 has been a huge disappointment (I think that is putting it mildly) in this console war to date, and IMO I'm not being biased in saying that as virtually every newspaper and publication from the NY Times to IGN to Newsweek has reported as such. The sales numbers speak for themselves. The PS3 may have been aimed at the elite tech gamer at $600 but they've already lost a huge part of their market share in terms of THIS group of consoles, and time will tell how much they recover of it as the year progresses. To me Blu Ray is hanging on by a thread if they drop it from a more "mainstream" PS3 since the standalone Blu Ray machines are substantially more expensive than HD-DVD and, if they don't have the PS3 to support it, it'll be a huge hit to Sony.

As far as MSN goes, sure they turn out as much crap in their spin. I've never been a staunch MSN defender, I hate Windows, only use Firefox, and only bought a PC a few years ago because I couldn't justify overpaying for a Mac and having compatability issues.

The 360 drive -- listen, it's an add-on, not a fully functioning player. We all knew that ahead of time. If they really wanted to embrace the format they would've forced consumers to pay for it on top of the system, like Sony did with Blu Ray. In retrospect both formats are niche to be sure and it looks like MS made the right call in not mandating the tech to people who really don't need it or care for it. The drive is okay but even at $130 it's overpriced since the audio drawbacks were a problem, and the difference now between it and a full-fledged, functioning HD-DVD standalone is just over $150 these days. I wouldn't recommend the drive to anyone with an HDTV for that reason.

Anyway I am loving the A20. Excellent upscaling and good build quality as well. Load times under 30 seconds also! If it goes under $400 later this year I would heartily recommend it (it's already at $399 at Value Electronics).

[Eric W.]

I hope you don't think that any of our long winded dialogues here are ever meant past fun banter.

I'm not emotionally invested or involved nor do I share any kinds of loyalties past what I feel is a well earned mistrust of Microsoft. (Their history in the PC market to this day really speaks for itself.)

There's plenty of spin and BS on both sides, and it comes down to this: If you have the beans and you can't wait? You need to own both formats someway, somehow, to get the job done.


If I were Sony, I tell you what I'd do:

We've seen this talk that they might put out an 80 gig PS3. Forget it.

If I were them I'd go to 120 to match the Xbox 360 Elite.

I'd make that 120 gig PS3 $599 and take the 60 down to $499.

They can do this and afford to do it because MS is overcharging people for the cost of that 120 gig hard drive on the Elite.

Proof? Go to www.pricewwatch.com, newegg, mwave, zipzoomfly, or any number of computer stores and you'll see in short order that you can get some pretty decent 500GB hard drives for what MS is charging for their 120 GB hard drive on the Elite.

The PS3 is going through the typical first year "bleh" that every game console goes through. The price didn't do them any favors.

If you'll recall, the 360's first 8 months therabouts were about as dead as the PS3's are now.

The PS3 will start showing some real life this summer when the multiplatform football titles come out (can't wait! Read up on NCAA 2008!).. some more exclusives and a nice build up into the holidays.

The 360 is where I'd expect a console with a free year's headstart to be. I think things get a lot more interesting come the holidays.

The Wii has done great, but can they keep it up? I'm concerned that I'm starting to see some GameCube like bugaboos show up already, namely tepid software support.

I just really hope that HD opticals don't end up like SACD vs. DVD-A. That would make me sad. If anything, that's where I can become emotional: When I see things that I perceive as needlessly prolonging this format war and thus keeping HD adoption slowed down that much more.

[AndyDursin]

In the end, as I have said before, I love both of these formats. Once you have them, and as much as I love upscaling standard DVDs (and how well it works), there isn't any going back.

The mere thought of watching BLADE RUNNER and LEGEND in HD by year's end just really gets me excited, and alone is worth a standalone price.

[Eric W.]

In the end, as I have said before, I love both of these formats. Once you have them, and as much as I love upscaling standard DVDs (and how well it works), there isn't any going back.

The mere thought of watching BLADE RUNNER and LEGEND in HD by year's end just really gets me excited, and alone is worth a standalone price.

If you haven't gotten there yet Andy, you're going to come to a place soon where you literally can't watch DVD or regular TV anymore. That's where I've been for a few months now.

There is no going back.

HD 4 life baby!