Curious that Sony are doing an in-house authoring app targeting very high end production when the industry standard solution provider is already offering a solution, presumably at a more competitive pricepoint, that also does HD DVD.

hmm... methinks that DVDArhitect 4 may be sorely stunted before it gets to grow...

who knows.... i do know however that im getting fed up with all this ....

More than likely we'll end up needing to get ourselves a BD AND HD DVD burners jsut to keep up with the demand...

not impressed one bit...

$50,000? Don't worry, I'm sure it won't be long before it's down to a more reasonable $45,995. :-)

Fred

OK, I'm a little dense sometimes,, does this mean there still isn't a delivery format for HDV without mortgaging the house , or winning the lottery ?

$50,000? Don't worry, I'm sure it won't be long before it's down to a more reasonable $45,995. :-)

That's the upgrade deal for current DVDA users. However, the offer expires in 30 days, so better move quickly!

From what I've read, Ulead's Movie Factory ($50--at least the price is a little better) can create an HD-DVD image that can be burned in Nero which are playable on the new HD-DVD players. At present these are limited to 20 min for a single layer or 40 min for dual-layer discs. Alternatively, you can use something like a Linkplayer or Zensonic for playback until the HD formats become available and more affordable.

wwaag

I would be very surprised if this has had any impact on DVDA4 in any way.

This is a high end application for "the advanced BD features" in studio workflows.

Nothing to do with burning a simple BD video disk.

Remember that Sony is very protective about even their BD disk menu software, even the $1,000 players sold at retail today don't have support for what they say it will do.

I wouldn't even bet on DVDA4 supporting BD at release time. It seems key parts of the specs are in flux, so they could either say "it will come later" or put in some very limited token support.

Time for Sony to drop that kimono if they want to make some money with this.

Reminds me of how they catch monkeys in India. They tie a coconut to a tree and cut an opening in the coconut that is just big enough for a monkey's hand with straight fingers, but too small for a clenched hand to pass through.

Then they put some monkey candy inside and go home for a good night's sleep.

The next day they come back. If a monkey passed by during the night, he will still be standing there with his hand inside the coconut, with his hand clenched around the goodies inside. He can't let go to escape, because then he loses the candy. So he'd rather stand there until the hunters (or should we call them "gatherers" :O) come and pick him up, so that he can become the main ingredient in monkey soup.

You can see that in Sony's treatment of the PSP (make it difficult to create UEM programming, so nobody bothers and the product sells 1% of what it could), and now BD (too dangerous to let the riffraff see the code for menus, etc.).

I'm surprised that Sir Howard hasn't been giving this a high end view, as I think Sony's future depends on their ability to create true mass market products.

Remember the original Walkman? Small, easy-to-use, reasonably priced, and easy to record for. The result was a then unprecedented success.

Time to pull off that kimono and show the goods.

Sony has a lot of good people, now they just have to push the [Chicken Little fear-driven] suits aside, and get one person to show the way. Not two captains, not three, just one.

I was hoping Sir Howard would be the one.

Either I was wrong or he is just taking his time.

Perhaps the problem is they still remember what happened to the Sony guy that designed the Walkman?
Maybe the induction spiel left out the part about his resurrection?


Anyway as noted above, all you really need is some quite cheap software and an existing DVD burner to create disks for HD DVD, swap the burner for a HD DVD burner and you can fit plenty of video onto the disk. I'm guessing the same thing will work with a BD burner.

Bob.

This whole thing is makin my head hurt, Sony is going to screw this up just like beta unless they get in high gear quick. Toshiba ,Samsung ummm, which would I buy ? Sony had a player they showed back in 2003 or4 , what happened to that ?
I'm done now, going to edit some sd stuff.

"Sony is going to screw this up just like beta unless they get in high gear quick. "

Gonna? Try they already have screwed up big. Nw to make matters even worse, word on the grapevine is that right about the time Sony releases Vegas 7 and DVDA4, Adobe is going to release an update to the production studio that enables...ready for it? HD DVD and BD authoring. So if for some reason, Sony doesnt release DVDA4 with some sort of HD authoring, they will lose whatever market share they currently have which isnt much. Add to it Apples FCP6 and DVDS5 is rumored to have complete support for both formats authoring as well.

Sony has always had excellent ideas and poor marketing and models. Sonys major problem is GREED. It happened with Betamax. Its killing the PSP and it will kill BD. People can forgive delays from companies (look at MS) but forgiveness for delays for a product that will still cost a mint to posess or produce is non-existsent in todays market place. BD may be superior technology and capacity wise but right now, the reviews I have seen have HD DVD kicking BD's ass in terms of price and quality. Sony is banking on PS3 to push their format but frankly, I dont see it happening as MANY developers have already said that PS3 is too complex to design for not to mention PS3 price is also higher than x360.

The smartest thing Sony could do is FLOOD the market with players at a low cost point because their major cash flow will come from the sales of BD games and movies NOT the players. So why cut your own throat now trying to make a few bucks off players with not a lot of content and lose market share and hinge success of your product on what the future MAY bring? A smart business makes money anyway it can as soon as it can. Then again Sony has never been that smart. By flooding the market even at the same cost of HD DVD, at least it gives them a fighting chance and consumers a choice of ehat to buy. Right now, spending $500 looks a lot better than $1k and the $500 is giving better quality currently.

I agree, a lot is riding on the PS3 - I sure would not want to be the head of that department.

By the way, this could possibly be the greatest sentence ever composed on this forum:

"Then they put some monkey candy inside and go home for a good night's sleep."

Coursedesign...I salute you!

The whole situation is a joke really.

What I find really funny is that if Sony had courted public opinion about Blu-Ray it wouldn't be taking this ridiculous attitude.

I get a feeling that Blu-Ray will die as a film playback format, but might survive as an archive/storage format (IF the price came down).

Looking ahead, the holographic discs which are just around the corner will launch us into "3D" and "Holographic Projection" and make BluRay as ancient as Edison drum recordings.
JJK

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here but I don't see the core issue as being DVD Vs HD-DVD Vs BD Vs HVD. These are all just ways of storing more and more bits on a shiny disk. As we try to fit more bits the technical challenges increase.
At the moment BD seems to be stumbling on those challenges, well that and production costs. But so what, no new technology has been free of problems. BD should be the clear winner and yes myabe down the road HVD will give us more bytes of storage than we can think of ways to use.
However the issue really seems to go to what is stored in those bytes and how we can access them. From my fuzzy memory this is how MS got drawn into the fray. Their vision for the future saw the HTPC as an entertainment hub for a wired house and judging by the takeup of that concept it's not an unrealistic one.
However Sony decided this concept would blow a hole in their great DRM scheme, letting the user copy the contents of a BD to a HDD and streaming it around the house was just not going to be on. Sony could have decided on HD-DVD or HVD media technology and the same issue would still be at the nub of the problem.

Now Sony have done a great job of killing off every new bit of technology they unleash. MD died a pretty quiet death as a consummer format, they never grasped how a mp3 player was meant to work, they never saw the huge potential for UMD and now it's DOA and it looks like they've killed BD before it even got started. All of these technologies were great, Sony engineered the products well, no real lemons amongst them. They simply crippled them. Oh and I forgot to mention DAT as well. I wasn't really 'there' during the years when that was launched but again it seems it too started out life with all kinds of DRM issues that got canned later in the show but by then Joe Average had gone away, content with CDA. My Sony DAT will happily bit copy copy protected tapes, how silly was the fiasco that bought about that turn of events? I don't know but I bet it played out much the same as the BD one is about to.

Bob.

farss - maybe the battles are internal as much as anything else. Sony is a huge company with many facets and branches. Maybe some parts were great advocates of the technology while others fought it for concerns about piracy and copy protection etc.

Maybe overall they don't focus on what the consumer wants because they don't trust the consumer. My gut feeling is that the content owners would love to be able to charge us a fee every single time we watch or listen to a media, and then make it ubiquitous on all kinds of distribution formats. But making this a reality is seeming to be quite impractical.

Someone said they should flood the market with low-cost BD players. Maybe the technology is too buggy for that to happen (yet). And what is low-cost? Raw materials cost only? Either way, they probably lose their shirts on R&D costs the first few years.

Jayster,

You're absolutely right.

Too many captains commanding different directions at the same time.

As a result the ship is making circles in the Bermuda Triangle, and then sunk by more metaphors.

As a result the ship is making circles in the Bermuda Triangle, and then sunk by more metaphors.

lol.

As to dumping PS3's on the market at a loss, they are already plan on doing that. All the game makers do. They intend on making more from the games. I have heard it was projected that Sony will lose about $350 on each PS3 while MS is currently losing about $280 per machine.