ps3 vs. toshiba hd-dvd players out already

strawberry · 05-19-2006, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornbread

Again, BR Will use inferior MPEG 2 at launch, who knows what the future holds, so stop pretending to know.

I know that tomorrow is Saturday. I know that next year is 2007. I also know that there's nothing difficult or complicated about adding AVC and VC1 to BR's authoring toolkit. I use both codecs on a daily basis with a piece of $400 encoding software, so I'm pretty sure that Sony can pull this off as well when they need to. Right now, they don't.

It's simple stuff. I don't need to pretend to know it. You could encode VC1 or AVC right now from your PC if you want- so stop pretending that this is going to be some sort of hurdle for Sony- it's not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornbread

Start thinking outside the box, HD-DVDs and BR are not like DVDs it is a very different technology. The past is not always an indication of the future.

Give me a reason to. All I see are DVD's with more storage capacity. Show me where the studios and manufacturers are thinking outside the box, and I'll start doing it too. Right now, I'm seeing jack and squat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornbread

Plus Microsoft supported the DVD enabling compatibility, all inbedded in their operating system. Microsoft will not be supporting Blue Ray.

No, they haven't- and they still don't. You can't play back a Video DVD on a PC at all without first downloading an MPEG2 decoder. One does NOT come standard with Windows.

It hasn't hurt the success of the DVD format one bit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornbread

There is no guarantee at this point that PowerDVD or WinDVD will be licensed to make an HD-DVD player. Since Microsoft and Toshiba are in bed together we might never see third party players.

Third party support for both formats was announced over a year ago, and has been demoed countless times since. Windows support is absolutely meaningless.

http://channels.lockergnome.com/news...powerdvd.phtml

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...6/ai_n13640817

winpitt · 05-19-2006, 10:11 AM

Strawberry,

Cannot agree with that blanket statement. It is clearly inaccurate. You may question how much or little impact Vista support will have, but to say it's meaningless is a stretch. Apparently it's not meaningless to HP.

[quote=strawberry]

Third party support for both formats was announced over a year ago, and has been demoed countless times since. Windows support is absolutely meaningless.
QUOTE]

strawberry · 05-19-2006, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

Strawberry,

Cannot agree with that blanket statement. It is clearly inaccurate. You may question how much or little impact Vista support will have, but to say it's meaningless is a stretch. Apparently it's not meaningless to HP.

Don't just tell me it's inaccurate- show me how it's inaccurate. Give me one meaninful, specific, functional reason why it will be important to have native Vista support. Tell me precisely what advantage I'm going to have as a content authorer, or even just as a movie watcher, by using HD-DVD on a PC vs. Blu-Ray, given the fact that DVD never saw official Windows support, and the average Joe has been viewing and authoring DVD's for years now with no difficulty at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

Apparently it's not meaningless to HP.

Apparently it is meaningless to Dell, however.

winpitt · 05-19-2006, 11:33 AM

I absolutely do not understand your inability to understand this. You are stating that the fact that the largest OS developer in the world natively supporting one standard and not the other has absolutely no effect. That not having to have any 3rd party components (other than the drive itself) means nothing.

You're focusing on what it means to a content authorer. I could care less about that part. It should NOT make a difference there.

The point is that while we can debate exactly how much or how little it will impact things rolling out, it is frankly ridiculous from a pure logic perspective to say it is meaningless.

Here's "one specific reason". Native support means that if my corporate IT department - who does not permit users to have local administrative rights on their machines therefore they cannot install new apps - hands me any new laptop, and I take that machine on an international flight to Tokyo, so long as the laptop has an HD-DVD drive and I have HD-DVD media, I can watch it. On the other hand, if it's a BR drive and media, I cannot.

Look, I agree it may not be an industry changing variable. The impact may not be measureable. I just think you were being overly sarcastic - or perhaps just exaggerating - when you say it is meaningless. It is not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by strawberry

Don't just tell me it's inaccurate- show me how it's inaccurate. Give me one meaninful, specific, functional reason why it will be important to have native Vista support. Tell me precisely what advantage I'm going to have as a content authorer, or even just as a movie watcher, by using HD-DVD on a PC vs. Blu-Ray, given the fact that DVD never saw official Windows support, and the average Joe has been viewing and authoring DVD's for years now with no difficulty at all.

Apparently it is meaningless to Dell, however.

strawberry · 05-19-2006, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

The point is that while we can debate exactly how much or how little it will impact things rolling out, it is frankly ridiculous from a pure logic perspective to say it is meaningless.

From a purely logical perspective, it is precisely correct to say that Vista support for HD-DVD is meaningless if a tangible example of it's impact can't be produced. So far one hasn't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

Here's "one specific reason". Native support means that if my corporate IT department - who does not permit users to have local administrative rights on their machines therefore they cannot install new apps - hands me any new laptop, and I take that machine on an international flight to Tokyo, so long as the laptop has an HD-DVD drive and I have HD-DVD media, I can watch it. On the other hand, if it's a BR drive and media, I cannot.

First of all- have you EVER noticed or experienced this problem with a laptop equipped with a DVD player? No? Here's why:

Any laptop, and I mean ANY LAPTOP that comes with a BR drive will ship with the necessary decoder/player already installed- no help from the IT department required. Do you think Dell, HP and Sony are going to sell laptops or desktops with BR drives and then just leave it up to the end user to figure it out from there? Have they done so in the past with DVD drives? Of course not.

This isn't a matter of BR not having native support from the word go. It will, just as DVD did- but it won't be coming from MS, it will instead be coming courtesy of the manufacturer that made the system. The only exception to this will be for system builders who buy a BR drive as a stand-alone. This is also not a problem though, because, in general, most system builders tend to know how to install the simple piece of software that comes bundled with the drive- they are system builders afterall, and they've been doing so for five years now with standard DVD players.

If, between the two of us, we can't come up with a single example that shows how native support from within Vista is going to be beneficial to the end user, then I'm sorry, but it is indeed a meaningless proposition.

Revolv · 05-19-2006, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strawberry

Revolv, you've typed a huge response, and I'm not even going to bother going through all of it due to time constraint. I appreciate you keeping things civil- so I will do the same. In general, though, here are my beefs:

Civil is the only way

Please don't take our divergent views as anything disrepectful.

Quote:

#1.) The idea that VC1 or AVC or MPG2 are somehow "superior" to one another. They're codecs- that's it. Yes, MPG2 is less efficient than the other two- but, as a professional video producer I encode in all 3 formats on a near daily basis, and I can assure you that there is no inherent quality difference beyond efficiency. You're probably right about VC1 with regard to Sony- it's doubtful they'll end up using it themselves. You couldn't be more incorrect in asserting that VC1 is considered the superior codec, to H.264, though. It's not viewed that way by the professionals in my world.

At the same data rate, VC1 will produce a better picture, no debate there, particularly when you are talking about 18 to 20 Mbps. Furthermore, VC1 is significantly better at eliminating motion artifacting than MPG 2, it's part of the core appeal of the format, because of the way it's designed.

Quote:

#2.) With regard to dual layer BD-rom production- there are conflicting reports regarding the issue. It's obvious which side of the fence you're on whenever there are conflicting reports because of your A1 purchase- but let's assume that the BR camp has "insurmountable" problems with dual layer production and has to release single layer, MPG2 discs. You say that 20mbps will be too low in heavy motion scenes- which would be right in the case of a CBR author- but these aren't transport stream OTA broadcasts we're talking about. Encode the same film with a VBR at an average of 20mbps and it will be pristine.

Yes, I am on one side and you're on another, but right now the only entity that says everything is fine is Sony. A bunch of other companies who are doing the disks and the production machines say different, so one has to judge who is more likely to be giving the real deal.

I wouldn't call 20 Mbps "low", only that MPG 2 at 20 Mbps can't match VC1 at 18 Mbps.

Also - Everyone recognizes that D-Theater pre-recorded movies were the best HD source around till now. D-T tapes played MPG 2 at 28 Mbps and the tapes held 44 Gigs for those movies. But even D-T suffered from MPG artifacting in high action scenes. MPG 2 at 20 mbps will have more difficulty at 20 Mbps.

As far as Variable Bit Rate, compared to Constant Bit Rate goes, VBR can help provide a bit rate boost for a couple/few seconds or so, but will have to "borrow" the bits from before and after to still maintain an overall average. Sustained action scenes will render the advantages of VBR useless and in fact create additional difficulties ensuring that parts of the scene do not become bit-starved.

Again, because VC1 performs it's compression so differently to MPG 2, it does not suffer from these same sorts of motion artifacts.

The problem remains that D-Theater had a data rate 40% greater than the 20 Mbps on SL BD-ROM with Mpeg 2. Rightnow, most owners of both D-Theater and HD DVD are reporting that the HD DVD movies are looking better than the D-T movies.

Quote:

#3.) I said that the movie releases for both HD-DVD and BR this year are going to be bare bones, minimalist releases. Extra compression techniques aren't going to be required for the level of production we're going to be seeing from them. You went on to talk about the hardware capabilities of the players- which is fine- but it's not what I was talking about. I say again- movie releases for both HD-DVD and BR this year are going to be bare bones, minimalist releases.

I didn't bring this up, so I'm assuming that it is tendered for additional consideration. It's very true, of course, that early releases from either format will not have all the best aspects of extras and interactive content.

But it is good to note that some of the HD DVD releases so far actually include the full two-disc content from their SD DVD special releases (the extras were in SD however). So there's lots of room yet to use. However, on SL BD ROM with Mpeg 2, there may be less extra space left over - so they may have to consider releasing a two-disc set or dropping a lot of the extras to manage to fit on one disc.

Quote:

#4.) HD-DVD underdelivered on more than just 5.1 TrueHD. I already mentioned the fact that there's no 1080p output as of yet. There were far fewer titles at launch than Toshiba said there would be last fall, and, speaking of last fall, that's when HD-DVD was supposed to launch- six full months ago. BR was supposed to launch this spring, and they'll be anywhere from 3-6 months late, depending on whether or not they hit closer to July or September/October.

Actually both formats have been promised for almost two years, so why split hairs over all the different "timeframes" they've all "aimed for".

Once they actually each SET an exact date for the launch of each format, HD DVD was one week later, and BR was one month later (so far). It is rather irrelevant, but hey.

As for 1080p, HD DVD didn't promise 1080p output on the first players. But the discs are encoded at 1080p, so they'll give the best of what any particular HD DVD player can output. The 2nd gen HD DVD players will support the 1080p also.

Furthermore, most HDTVs, even the 1080p native res sets, cannot accept 1080p input. With modern de-interlacers on-board these TVs, they take the 1080i60 stream from the player and re-construct the original 1080p24 data on the disc, then send the 1080p60 to the screen, in essence. No pixel data is lost in outputing 1080p24 as 1080i60 on these players.

Quote:

#5) This is your direct quote: "The market and the public are going to expect the best out of these formats now, and will test them severely." I really disagree with this point. The public couldn't care less about these products right now. Sales numbers over the course of the next year are going to be embarrassingly low for both camps.

Yes, you are correct. I should have said, the pundits and technology recommenders are going to be examining them closely

Revolv · 05-19-2006, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by siccivic420

can one of you guys explain to me how having on-board decoders for audio help without having hdmi 1.3 to pass it helps.educate me please.I was just wondering if i could listen to next gen audio with my current reciever denon 3803,cause i was going to get a new denon 3807 or yamaha 2700 with hdmi 1.3 to go with my ps3 and maybe lg universal HD player.than

x

Basically - With a decoder on-board the player, you will not need to have HDMI 1.3 to get the full experience into your AVR.

The player simply does the decoding itself, then sends the decoded audio straight to your AVR.

There are three ways -

1) HDMI, where the decoded digital audio is sent directly into the AVR in the format the AVR uses internally. Typically, even when an AVR receives a Dolby Digital or DTS stream from a DVD player, and the AVR does the decoding (not the player) the AVR still decodes to PCM internally and does all the mixing, bass management and audio effects with the audio in PCM format. This PCM data is only converted to analog at the amplifier, before being sent to the speakers.

So when the HD DVD players decode DD+ to PCM, the AVR is getting the same untouched digital audio it would have gotten if the AVR had done the decoding itself.

Importantly, there is no other shipping CE product available anywhere, other than these HD DVD players, that can even decode DD+ or Tru HD. So the Toshiba players are actually giving you access to something you can't get any other way. Onboard decoding, therefore, is good.

2) Analog, the audio decoded to PCM inside the player is converted to analog signals inside the player also, and output via the analog terminals at back

3) Optical/coax - the PCM data is re-coded to DTS and sent via optical (the defined standards for optical do not allow the datarates that these new audio formats can produce, so recoding the audio to DTS is strictly there to provide continued support for these "legacy" connections. They sound very good tho, as I used this for a couple of days before my new Denon arrived.

Wow - I've written a book - I hope I didn't confuse you more

Revolv · 05-19-2006, 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornbread

This is slanted. BR will use MPG2 in the short term because they don't have to deal with the space crunch that HD-DVD does. H.264 is part of the BR spec, and it will be utilized when necessary down the road. It's not tricky business- it's just a codec.

Yes, they are hoping to start releasing the non-MPG movies by the end of the year. The only problem is that a very large percentage of the movies that will then be available for Bluray will already have been released on MPG disks. Bluray claims that they will release up to 200 movies by the end of the year.

Quote:

Answer: Again, BR Will use inferior MPEG 2 at launch, who knows what the future holds, so stop pretending to know.

Sony-watchers say they don't want to use VC1 because Microsoft is a competitor. They have indicated that they will move from MPG to AVC H.264 - but early the Japanese HD DVD releases in AVC were not as good as the VC1 HD DVD releases either.

But you're right, it's tough to know what will actually happen - Sony Pictures may actually decide to choose VC1 - or AVC may suddenly improve and beat VC1.

Quote:

Answer: Start thinking outside the box, HD-DVDs and BR are not like DVDs it is a very different technology. The past is not always an indication of the future. Plus Microsoft supported the DVD enabling compatibility, all inbedded in their operating system. Microsoft will not be supporting Blue Ray.

And because it's so different it's having different problems. The data pits are packed tighter than on HD DVD and this has meant they've had far more problems producing readable, reliable discs (SD DVD uses .60, HD DVD uses .65 and BD uses .85) because the tolerances and the focus of the laser is more critical.

It's all yet to be seen - everything said by any one of us on these forums is all guess work until they are released. So I'm waiting to see, too

strawberry · 05-19-2006, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revolv

Yes, I am on one side and you're on another

No, I'm really not on a side. I haven't bought a player, and don't intend to buy one at all this year from either camp. From there, I'll re-evaluate the situation in 2007. I don't have anything bad to say about HD-DVD. There have been times where things looked bleak for the HD-DVD camp, and I've said as much at those points- but I'm not sitting here trying to tell anyone that "Toshiba sucks," or "HD-DVD is crap," etc. I've defended HD-DVD from people at one end of the continuum in the past, and now it seems that I'm defending BR from people on the other end.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revolv

but right now the only entity that says everything is fine is Sony. A bunch of other companies who are doing the disks and the production machines say different, so one has to judge who is more likely to be giving the real deal.

No, it's not just Sony. Panasonic and TDK have both reaffirmed post E3 that their confidence in the production of dual-layer BR discs is still high. At the end of the day- the manufacturers in the BR camp will get the problem solved. If there are insurmountable problems that delay the production of dual layer discs in 2006, then it will be a very simple process for Sony to update their authoring toolset to allow for AVC encoding for those projects that require it. There's nothing new, fancy, or tricky about H.264. I'm not seeing anything here that spells disaster for BR- they've got more than enough options on the table to avoid this issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revolv

As far as Variable Bit Rate, compared to Constant Bit Rate goes, VBR can help provide a bit rate boost for a couple/few seconds or so, but will have to "borrow" the bits from before and after to still maintain an overall average.
Again, because VC1 performs it's compression so differently to MPG 2, it does not suffer from these same sorts of motion artifacts.

I've had much better luck with VBR methods than what you describe here. You have to bear in mind that there are quite a few extended periods of time in any given movie that have low interframe motion, which is what allows you the resources to use a much lower bitrate than the average- which, in turn, allows you to go much higher than average for extended periods when needed. The general rule of thumb for standard DVD is that you can effectively double the compression efficiency of most projects without noticeable loss of quality by going multi-pass VBR.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revolv

Actually both formats have been promised for almost two years, so why split hairs over all the different "timeframes" they've all "aimed for".

Once they actually each SET an exact date for the launch of each format, HD DVD was one week later, and BR was one month later (so far).

This is incorrect. HD-DVD announced a 4th Quarter 2005 launch at the 2005 CES. There was a list of titles expected for 2005 and everything. This was supposedly set in stone as of this time a year ago. There was nothing vague or contingent about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revolv

As for 1080p, HD DVD didn't promise 1080p output on the first players.

They didn't promise it- but it was a feature that people were looking for right up until the specs for the Toshiba player were first announced.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revolv

Furthermore, most HDTVs, even the 1080p native res sets, cannot accept 1080p input. With modern de-interlacers on-board these TVs, they take the 1080i60 stream from the player and re-construct the original 1080p24 data on the disc, then send the 1080p60 to the screen, in essence. No pixel data is lost in outputing 1080p24 as 1080i60 on these players.

Only if the movie is being played back on a very modern, very high-end display. Assuming that is the case- then I agree with you. Boby and I got into quite a drawn out debate over this very topic a while back.

Cornbread · 05-19-2006, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strawberry

I know that tomorrow is Saturday. I know that next year is 2007. I also know that there's nothing difficult or complicated about adding AVC and VC1 to BR's authoring toolkit. I use both codecs on a daily basis with a piece of $400 encoding software, so I'm pretty sure that Sony can pull this off as well when they need to. Right now, they don't.

It's simple stuff. I don't need to pretend to know it. You could encode VC1 or AVC right now from your PC if you want- so stop pretending that this is going to be some sort of hurdle for Sony- it's not.

Give me a reason to. All I see are DVD's with more storage capacity. Show me where the studios and manufacturers are thinking outside the box, and I'll start doing it too. Right now, I'm seeing jack and squat.

No, they haven't- and they still don't. You can't play back a Video DVD on a PC at all without first downloading an MPEG2 decoder. One does NOT come standard with Windows.

It hasn't hurt the success of the DVD format one bit.

Third party support for both formats was announced over a year ago, and has been demoed countless times since. Windows support is absolutely meaningless.

http://channels.lockergnome.com/news...powerdvd.phtml

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...6/ai_n13640817

1. No one is saying they can't use a different codec, I am simply saying that they have chosen not use anything more than MPEG2 at launch, which means BR does not have superior technology in this regard as some people earlier claimed. Home Theater magazine is claiming that Blue Ray (BR) chose MPEG 2 because they (Blue Ray) think it produces a better picture quality, which it doesn't.

2. HD-DVD is more like a computer than a DVD player. It is running a 2.8 Pentium 4 with a Linux operating system. They must have powerful hardware and software to run the advanced compression algorithms. It is nothing like a DVD player and you can't think of it as just a DVD player with more storage. The audio and video decoding takes a tremendous amount of computing power. Video card drivers were supported by Microsoft and enabled DVD playback on Windows machines. Even if 3rd party software comes to fruition for BR it won't be free and might not have Microsoft certified driver support.

winpitt · 05-19-2006, 02:00 PM

Yes. I have absolutely experienced this specific problem with Compaq Evo N600 and N610 notebooks equipped with a DVD drive using a standard corporate image. I have also experienced this issue with IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads equipped with a standard corporate image.

You need to take a step back, because you clearly do not fully appreciate the general user community out there. I'm assuming you're not in a corporate environment, or if you are you aren't that familiar with common IT practices. You apparently do not realize that most Enterprise IT organizations do NOT under any circumstance use a standard delivered laptop image as delivered by the vendor. That licensing agreements are developed, for example using MS EA or Select agreements, focusing on the ability to easily manage licensing across a global enterprise at the least possible cost. And as an IT executive, I could frankly give a damn about adding a single solitary penny so you can watch a DVD.

What you're saying might make sense in the home or recreation user perspective.

What is frankly far more troubling to me is that you apparently cannot view any circumstances from any position other than your own prefered one.

You asked for an example. I gave you one. It is factually correct and legitimate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by strawberry

From a purely logical perspective, it is precisely correct to say that Vista support for HD-DVD is meaningless if a tangible example of it's impact can't be produced. So far one hasn't.

First of all- have you EVER noticed or experienced this problem with a laptop equipped with a DVD player? No? Here's why:

Any laptop, and I mean ANY LAPTOP that comes with a BR drive will ship with the necessary decoder/player already installed- no help from the IT department required. Do you think Dell, HP and Sony are going to sell laptops or desktops with BR drives and then just leave it up to the end user to figure it out from there? Have they done so in the past with DVD drives? Of course not.

This isn't a matter of BR not having native support from the word go. It will, just as DVD did- but it won't be coming from MS, it will instead be coming courtesy of the manufacturer that made the system. The only exception to this will be for system builders who buy a BR drive as a stand-alone. This is also not a problem though, because, in general, most system builders tend to know how to install the simple piece of software that comes bundled with the drive- they are system builders afterall, and they've been doing so for five years now with standard DVD players.

If, between the two of us, we can't come up with a single example that shows how native support from within Vista is going to be beneficial to the end user, then I'm sorry, but it is indeed a meaningless proposition.

strawberry · 05-19-2006, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

Yes. I have absolutely experienced this specific problem with Compaq Evo N600 and N610 notebooks equipped with a DVD drive using a standard corporate image. I have also experienced this issue with IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads equipped with a standard corporate image.

Wow- that must have made for a boring flight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

I'm assuming you're not in a corporate environment, or if you are you aren't that familiar with common IT practices.

You're starting to make this a bit personal, which is unfortunate. At any rate, you're wrong on both counts. I'm an advertising/corporate video producer, and I have to call my IT department to install so much as a font.

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

You apparently do not realize that most Enterprise IT organizations do NOT under any circumstance use a standard delivered laptop image as delivered by the vendor.

I'm aware that none of the four IT departments I've had to depend on in the workplace have ever stuck me with a DVD drive that didn't work. I'm aware that only travelling salesmen, upper management, and execs are at all likely to be travelling on airplanes with company laptops while worrying about playback of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content. I'm also aware that most people who fit that description can get their IT dept. to install a simple codec after a five minute phone call.

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

What is frankly far more troubling to me is that you apparently cannot view any circumstances from any position other than your own prefered one.

Well, try not to let it trouble you so much. Afterall- it's not just "my own prefered" view that I'm looking at things from. The insurmountably overwhelming majority of Vista-enabled machines equipped with BR/HD-DVD drives that are sold over the next 3-4 years will be sold to home and small business users. Corporate America isn't going to be in a big rush to upgrade to Vista-enabled systems, (remember how long XP adoption took?) and, beyond that, very few of the Vista-enabled machines installed in the corporate world are going to include either a BR or HD-DVD drive.

But I'm sure that it must be ever comforting for you to know that the ridiculously small handful of people that are likely to fit the description given in your example, namely executives who want to watch HD movies on their brand new Vista-enabled company laptop via an HD-DVD drive will be able to kick back and watch HD movies without first having to make a 5 minute phone call to the IT department.

Quote:

Originally Posted by winpitt

You asked for an example. I gave you one. It is factually correct and legitimate.

You're right- you've got me there. You've won this battle of semantics by providing an example that is both functional and far-reaching. I can no longer claim that native Vista support is absolutely meaningless. You should go buy yourself a beer or something.

strawberry · 05-19-2006, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornbread

HD-DVD is more like a computer than a DVD player. It is running a 2.8 Pentium 4 with a Linux operating system. They must have powerful hardware and software to run the advanced compression algorithms. It is nothing like a DVD player and you can't think of it as just a DVD player with more storage. The audio and video decoding takes a tremendous amount of computing power.

You're still not actually saying anything. I thought we were supposed to be thinking outside the box here. How does all of this translate into an altogether different experience from watching standard DVD's beyond the fact that it's in HD? I'm not trying to be difficult here- this is a very viable question that's being posed all over the net. There's a fear that neither BR or HD-DVD will succeed if Sony and/or Toshiba can't differentiate these new formats from DVD in any meaningful way beyond resolution and storage capacity. What do you think?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornbread

Even if 3rd party software comes to fruition for BR it won't be free and might not have Microsoft certified driver support.

First of all, there's no "even if." It's official, and it has been for a while: Nero, WinDVD, and PowerDVD will all support both formats. No question about it.

OEM products aside- NO BR PLAYER meant for the PC will ship without a free playback solution- even if it's in a light edition. This is no different of a situation than what exists for current DVD drives. Beyond that, as I've already stated, neither Dell, Sony, nor HP will be shipping out machines with non-functioning BR drives in them.

winpitt · 05-19-2006, 03:38 PM

Sorry, not intended to make it personal. Just have a natural tendency to take people to task when they make highly generalized statements but try to turn them into statements of total fact.

As for IT sticking you with a "DVD drive that didn't work", that's not what I said. I said it didn't have a plug-in to play DVD movies. It did function perfectly well to read (and write in CD format) DVD media.

Also, my IT departments have consistently de-prioritized installing any sort of non-standard client for reasons of cost and license management. Installing 3rd party sw on a corporate device makes the corporation responsible for licensing - not the individual.

So the point is that this is not simply a lesson in semantics. While I also don't believe that this will be a primary influence on the HD vs BR (perhaps vs something else entirely for that matter) I do think that it may have "some" effect - in that because MS will natively support HD-DVD, there is no additional cost - and no additional systems management requirements - to deal with this.

The point here is that you were making a blanket statement which violated logic. Frankly, there is some value to the simple endorsement of a standard - regardless of any known actual benefit. If you're in advertising you should know that. After all, isn't the Ad business really about trying to create perceptions regardless of reality? Or perhaps there is some scientific strategy behind that "I can't believe it's not butter" advertisement with Fabio..... Anyway, it's just frustrating that people on both sides of the BR vs HD debate seem to be myopic about "their" choice. I'm kind of laughing a bit, because I'm still in the "neither" camp at the moment.

Don't take it personally. If both sides with tone down the rhetoric we'd be in better shape. Of course, of Sony and Toshiba had acted responsibly, we'd all be watching content right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by strawberry

Wow- that must have made for a boring flight.

You're starting to make this a bit personal, which is unfortunate. At any rate, you're wrong on both counts. I'm an advertising/corporate video producer, and I have to call my IT department to install so much as a font.

I'm aware that none of the four IT departments I've had to depend on in the workplace have ever stuck me with a DVD drive that didn't work. I'm aware that only travelling salesmen, upper management, and execs are at all likely to be travelling on airplanes with company laptops while worrying about playback of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content. I'm also aware that most people who fit that description can get their IT dept. to install a simple codec after a five minute phone call.

Well, try not to let it trouble you so much. Afterall- it's not just "my own prefered" view that I'm looking at things from. The insurmountably overwhelming majority of Vista-enabled machines equipped with BR/HD-DVD drives that are sold over the next 3-4 years will be sold to home and small business users. Corporate America isn't going to be in a big rush to upgrade to Vista-enabled systems, (remember how long XP adoption took?) and, beyond that, very few of the Vista-enabled machines installed in the corporate world are going to include either a BR or HD-DVD drive.

But I'm sure that it must be ever comforting for you to know that the ridiculously small handful of people that are likely to fit the description given in your example, namely executives who want to watch HD movies on their brand new Vista-enabled company laptop via an HD-DVD drive will be able to kick back and watch HD movies without first having to make a 5 minute phone call to the IT department.

You're right- you've got me there. You've won this battle of semantics by providing an example that is both functional and far-reaching. I can no longer claim that native Vista support is absolutely meaningless. You should go buy yourself a beer or something.

winpitt · 05-19-2006, 03:47 PM

Actually, due to changes in MS licensing and the fact that Enterprise Agreements have become more common in large corporations, Vista is actually expected to have stronger adoption in corporations than did XP. Perhaps W2K would be a more accurate comparison than XP.

The issue is that there are a number of Enterprise related technologies available with Vista, including some significant DRM and Encryption capabilities, that really make it far more compelling. Especially in the land of SOX, HIPAA and PCI.

Just as with BR and HD-DVD, it's too early to tell. However we are actively testing Beta2 of Vista now, and plan to deploy on a rolling schedule about 90 days after release.

You are completely correct, however, about the inclusion of HD-DVD or BR. One caveat, however, is that since the OS will natively support it, our users will (though it will not be supported) be able to purchase an HD-DVD drive for notebooks, and install and use them with no support required. Out of probably about 1500 machines per year we deploy, I'd guess that if there is sufficient compelling content, more than a few people will do it.

[quote=strawberry]Well, try not to let it trouble you so much. Afterall- it's not just "my own prefered" view that I'm looking at things from. The insurmountably overwhelming majority of Vista-enabled machines equipped with BR/HD-DVD drives that are sold over the next 3-4 years will be sold to home and small business users. Corporate America isn't going to be in a big rush to upgrade to Vista-enabled systems, (remember how long XP adoption took?) and, beyond that, very few of the Vista-enabled machines installed in the corporate world are going to include either a BR or HD-DVD drive.

QUOTE]

05-19-2006, 03:47 PM	#45
winpitt High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 75	One minor issue here Actually, due to changes in MS licensing and the fact that Enterprise Agreements have become more common in large corporations, Vista is actually expected to have stronger adoption in corporations than did XP. Perhaps W2K would be a more accurate comparison than XP. The issue is that there are a number of Enterprise related technologies available with Vista, including some significant DRM and Encryption capabilities, that really make it far more compelling. Especially in the land of SOX, HIPAA and PCI. Just as with BR and HD-DVD, it's too early to tell. However we are actively testing Beta2 of Vista now, and plan to deploy on a rolling schedule about 90 days after release. You are completely correct, however, about the inclusion of HD-DVD or BR. One caveat, however, is that since the OS will natively support it, our users will (though it will not be supported) be able to purchase an HD-DVD drive for notebooks, and install and use them with no support required. Out of probably about 1500 machines per year we deploy, I'd guess that if there is sufficient compelling content, more than a few people will do it. [quote=strawberry]Well, try not to let it trouble you so much. Afterall- it's not just "my own prefered" view that I'm looking at things from. The insurmountably overwhelming majority of Vista-enabled machines *equipped with BR/HD-DVD drives* that are sold over the next 3-4 years will be sold to home and small business users. Corporate America isn't going to be in a big rush to upgrade to Vista-enabled systems, (remember how long XP adoption took?) and, beyond that, very few of the Vista-enabled machines installed in the corporate world are going to include either a BR or HD-DVD drive. QUOTE]

05-19-2006, 10:11 AM	#32
winpitt High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 75	Strawberry, Cannot agree with that blanket statement. It is clearly inaccurate. You may question how much or little impact Vista support will have, but to say it's meaningless is a stretch. Apparently it's not meaningless to HP. [quote=strawberry] Third party support for both formats was announced over a year ago, and has been demoed countless times since. Windows support is absolutely meaningless. QUOTE]