OT: And the winner is... HD DVD!

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hazydave wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:06 AM
Years before Blu-Ray came out (or HD-DVD), I had a DVD player at home that did HD.. the IOData AVeL Linkplayer2. This was also a networked player, so I could play HDV files directly from my PC. It handled both DivX-HD 5 and WMV/HD. They had firmware updates every month or two during the effective life of the player. I learned to author WMV/HD DVDs (without an authoring system, it's JavaScript and HTML hacking). It was even possible to author a combination WMV/HD and DVD disc (the player would ask which to play when it detected this)... for short videos, anyway.

The reason most of you don't know anything about this DVD player, I rekon, is the same reason the Chinese HD standard is not going to catch on here -- there's no media market. There were a few companies making WMV/HD discs, but thanks to Microsoft's draconic DRM, DRMed discs didn't play on the IOData, even though the implemented DRM. HD-Net had a few films for WMV/HD that played.

The big need for a successful consumer HD format has nothing even remotely to do with what I can author at home for my home videos. I mean, I could do that just fine on a PC before the LinkPlayer came out, and I could put a media PC in my media room if I wanted to. No, the importance of that is distribution... whether I'm an independent film maker or just sending a video to Mom or Sis, I need to know they can play that video.

Blu-Ray has already hit the $100 mark, and it's going to sell like crazy this Christmas. Best Buy is actually making more dough on BD than DVD already. Every major Hollywood release goes out in BD.. some, like "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight" sold over 30% on BD, already. Even with the price wars, this is more progress since BD was released than DVD made in the same timeframe, with VHS there on the cheap.

When I bought my BD-R recorder, February 2008, it was the same price I paid for my first DVD recorder.. but they had already pretty much worked the bugs out. That first DVD recording drive had issues.

The Chinese players may well take over, unit-wise, due to the size of the Chinese market, but don't expect them here. Maybe, when the Chinese BD players get here en masse (and they will... China makes 80%+ of all DVD players, they are not going to walk away from the world market just to prove a point about standards), they'll also play Chinese discs... just as DVD players nearly always played VCD and SVCD. Anyone here recall feeling SVCD support was all that important once DVD-R drives cost $50?

In fact, I wager Hollywood, Inc. is just fine with this split... they never made money on films sold in China, anyway, due to the crazy level of VCD bootleg distribution.
Coursedesign wrote on 10/10/2009, 6:17 AM
The big need for a successful consumer HD format has nothing even remotely to do with what I can author at home for my home videos. I mean, I could do that just fine on a PC before the LinkPlayer came out, and I could put a media PC in my media room if I wanted to. No, the importance of that is distribution... whether I'm an independent film maker or just sending a video to Mom or Sis, I need to know they can play that video.

So you can count on Mom and Sis cranking up their LinkPlayers to play the home videos you send them?

Or do they have media PCs in their living room?

I take it they are using a $250 Logitech Harmony Universal Remote then, that you have hand-programmed for them?

Sorry to be facetious, but that is far from "here's a DVD of what my kids did last week."


Blu-Ray has already hit the $100 mark...

Yes, for some of the low-end players without the features that differentiate Blu-Ray (such as BD Live), and only when those players are on Blow-Out Sale, as happens maybe once a month currently in one or other local store (and $100 may become a permanent price level for partial capability players within 3-6 months).

...and it's going to sell like crazy this Christmas.

OK, if you say so.

To me, the Blu-Ray market looks more like the Laser Disc market in its middle age.

Player costs are down, but only enthusiasts are buying, and because of improvements in DVD scaling (back then it was a dramatic boost in commercial VHS tape picture quality, partially thanks to 55 micron recording), nobody sees a gigantic improvement in picture quality.

Laser Disc, as you may recall, died a slow death when the next consumer format hit the market: the DVD.
craftech wrote on 10/10/2009, 7:08 AM
Best Buy is actually making more dough on BD than DVD already.
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Then Best Buy must be the only place people buy Blu-Ray movies or their profit margin is 2000% since according to the latest data as of Saturday, October 10, 2009:

"Compared to DVD, Blu-ray represented 10.1% of the total market and 15.1% of the top 20 comparison. "

Here is another chart indicating that overall packaged-media sales from both DVD and Bu-Ray are down 14.4% from a year ago.:



You also stated.......some, like "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight" sold over 30% on BD, already.

Here is the latest Nielsen VideoScan data for the top 20 sellers as of the week ending October 4, 2009.

Not only doesn't The Dark Night even approach that figure, Watchmen isn't even on the list.

EDIT: According to the latest SEC filings for Best Buy:

The categories having the largest effect on our Domestic segment's comparable store sales

IAM4UK wrote on 10/10/2009, 7:47 AM
China cares nothing about copyrights and piracy.

American movie studios care very much about those things.

Somehow, these machines that are cheaper because they circumvent royalties will be outlawed for sale in the U.S.
craftech wrote on 10/10/2009, 7:50 AM
Somehow, these machines that are cheaper because they circumvent royalties will be outlawed for sale in the U.S.
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Ahh....someone who thoroughly understands US economic practices. A firm commitment to monopoly and consolidation ensured by Republican filibusters in the US Senate and covered up by the consolidated corporate media that dominates what we see and hear.

John
Coursedesign wrote on 10/10/2009, 8:05 AM
Somehow, these machines that are cheaper because they circumvent royalties will be outlawed for sale in the U.S.

You mean like when cassette tape recorders, VHS decks, and CD-R/DVD-R drives for PCs were quickly banned because they could potentially be used to avoid paying royalties?
busterkeaton wrote on 10/10/2009, 1:01 PM
I think folks are ready for blu ray and if the economy was in better shape, it would be a big, big Christmas for blu-ray.

Also I don't understand how the Nielsen Video Chart you linked to proves your point. It seems to me the percents listed in the index are relative to each other which is why the number one selling disk is 100%. I doubt that means 100% were blu-ray sales. Perhaps I have this wrong.

Also here is a link that says 36% of first week sales of Watchmen were the blu ray. Coraline was 20% that week. That probably trails off over time as more Blu-ray folks are probably first week buyers, but that just guessing.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i4e32728fe86b6c04250e2ac8e8a1948e

craftech wrote on 10/10/2009, 1:25 PM
I think folks are ready for blu ray and if the economy was in better shape, it would be a big, big Christmas for blu-ray.
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Perhaps, but the argument Kelly and I made during the flame wars over HD DVD vs Blu-Ray two years ago was that all of it was cost dependent and the other stuff didn't really matter to consumers. We said that if they don't lower the price to compete with SD DVD movies and players people will continue to choose SD DVD movies over HD movies. Most of the people who take this stuff way too seriously argued no, but time bore out our argument. Some are still making false analogies between VHS vs DVD and DVD vs BD. They still don't get it.
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Also I don't understand how the Nielsen Video Chart you linked to proves your point. It seems to me the percents listed in the index are relative to each other which is why the number one selling disk is 100%. I doubt that means 100% were blu-ray sales. Perhaps I have this wrong.
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The charts reflect how each title sold in relation to the best selling title as an index number. The best selling title being 100. The chart is only Blu-Ray sales, not both. Dave's argument was as follows:

Blu-Ray has already hit the $100 mark, and it's going to sell like crazy this Christmas. Best Buy is actually making more dough on BD than DVD already. Every major Hollywood release goes out in BD.. some, like "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight" sold over 30% on BD, already. Even with the price wars, this is more progress since BD was released than DVD made in the same timeframe, with VHS there on the cheap.

The stats don't bear out any of those arguments within the context of how he stated them.

John
craftech wrote on 10/10/2009, 1:41 PM
Many of you will probably find this ongoing regularly updated thread very helpful.

John
Coursedesign wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:06 PM
Yes, it helped me get a splinter out of my eye, because I laughed so hard my tears were flowing enough to flush it out.

OMG, BD year-over-year sales on a weekly basis are up an average of 130.7%!!!

That's a big number, right?

So, if they sold say 10,000 BDs during the same week a year ago, they are now selling 23,070 BDs this week.

Woooooow, that is so cool.

My eyes were too teared up to see what the actual unit numbers were. Anyone else dig it?

99.97% DVD vs. 0.03%BD?

Of course we'll see cheaper players, and we'll see the retail price of especially "B" and "C" movies in BD fall from $39.95 to close to the same price as DVD. Or not, in which case BD will continue to tread water while waiting for the Carpathia to arrive...
John_Cline wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:07 PM
Oh swell, a thread that consists of two guys with opposite views arguing about it. Heck, I can see that here.

Currently, there is no higher quality video delivery system than Blu-ray. I will continue to purchase Blu-ray titles until something better comes along. It is unlikely that this "something better" will be Internet delivery until we here in the U.S. get decent broadband speeds. I currently get about 20Mbps, but that's only half of the maximum transfer rate of Blu-ray.
JJKizak wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:27 PM
John Cline:

What differences do you see with the bitrate going from 25 to 40 mgs? I haven't burned any yet and wonder what bitrate to use.
JJK
earthrisers wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:45 PM
Why can't we be as mean in this Forum as those guys in the HD Smackdown forum are? Are we wimps, or what?

(Well, yeah, we have disagreements here now and gain, but for the most part it stays pretty civil.)
John_Cline wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:50 PM
It depends on the source material and the compression codec used. I've never made a disc at 40mbps, but I have made a lot of them at between 20-35 Mbps mostly using h.264 compression.

If the source is HDV or XDCAM-HD and it can be mostly smart-rendered, then I make Blu-ray discs using either the HDV standard 1440x1080-60i MPEG-2 at 25 Mbps or 1920x1080-60i MPEG-2 at 35 Mbps VBR. I process the audio separately, usually into a 24-bit linear PCM file and sometimes into a AC3 file. I demultimplex the resulting files into their elementary parts using a third-party demultiplexer and then load the video and .ac3 stream files into Encore and author it up. The discs look great. DVD Architect won't load a demultiplexed HDV file, which is too bad.
John_Cline wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:52 PM
"Well, yeah, we have disagreements here now and gain, but for the most part it stays pretty civil."

Apparently you weren't around during the BillyBoy era.
Coursedesign wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:53 PM
Currently, there is no higher quality video delivery system than Blu-ray. I will continue to purchase Blu-ray titles until something better comes along.

I don't think anyone is arguing that that doesn't make sense, because it is the highest quality delivery format for Hollywood movies.

The argument seems to be over whether BD will follow the path of the DVD when it was new, or the Laser Disc.

Some people suspect the former, I suspect the latter.

The only thing that could change that would be for Sony to drop patent royalties in return for volume, dropping it enough to reduce the BD premium over DVD (players and media prices) to something like 10% over DVD.

In that scenario, BD could take off and consumers would do what they have done in the past: buy the same old movies they like in the new better format.

I think the ivory tower administrators of Blu-Ray are thinking that their product is so vastly superior that people surely should be willing to buy new players at great expense and then cough up 35-50% more for every movie they buy, just to get the new diamond-crusted bliss of BD.

Umm, that could happen, but I can't recall any past format shift ion either audio or video that would validate that concept.

But there are plenty of cases where the "premium" concept failed, such as DVD-Audio and SA DVD whatever they were called (anyone even remember these super-ultra-premium-high-fidelity formats that required new players and much more expensive discs?).
John_Cline wrote on 10/10/2009, 5:05 PM
"The only thing that could change that would be for Sony to drop patent royalties in return for volume."

There are a LOT of companies besides Sony that have their slice of the Blu-ray patent pie, they would all need to agree to exchange royalties for volume. That would make sense. Although, maybe there's actually nothing wrong and the prices are falling at just about the same rate as CDs or DVDs did in their day. All technology gets cheaper over time. Look at LCD TV prices. I've seen Blu-ray players for under $100 lately and I spent a LOT more than that for my first DVD player. I paid close to $1000 for my first Blu-ray burner, now they're just over $100. Blank Blu-ray discs were about $40 each when I got in, now they're about $4. Heck, I paid over $1000 for my first CD burner along with $25 blank discs.

Considering the economy, I think Blu-ray is doing pretty well. I'm sure doing my part.

the fact of the matter is that Blu-ray IS vastly superior. There a lot of movies with which I thought I was intimately familiar, but then realized that I really wasn't when I saw the Blu-ray disc. I'm about to go out and buy the Blu-ray of the Wizard of Oz, I hear that it is absolutely spectacular. Of course, you can't judge the market by what I do. I bought into Betamax as a consumer format because of its superior quality, I also bought into LaserDisc. I jumped ito Blu-ray quite early, too. Sure, I'd like it to be cheaper, but the cost had very little to do with my decision to buy it, I wanted it and that's usually all the reason that I need. Is it any wonder I'm not married?
wjsd wrote on 10/11/2009, 12:27 AM
So, if they sold say 10,000 BDs during the same week a year ago, they are now selling 23,070 BDs this week.

There are many different ways of determining the relative success of Blu-ray. This one below is another way of saying the glass is half full. Somebody will read this and determine the glass is, in fact, half empty. Truth is, they're both right.
Adoption of Blu-ray Faster than DVD
I'm a big supporter of Blu-ray so I see this news as the glass being half full.

Generally, the big Blu-ray detractors out there initally bought into HD-DVD and they're so sore about choosing the losing format that they feel they can actually win if the winning format dies a quick death. And they're happy to help it die. I'd like to know if that profile fits 'Coursedesign'.
PeterWright wrote on 10/11/2009, 1:56 AM
To me its very simple.

I have a 46" Sony Bravia and watching SD DVDs on it is already a very good experience.
I'm not saying that HD isn't better - it is of course, but to make the mass population upgrade to Blu-Ray from what already is quite acceptable, it has to become much cheaper.
As John Cline has said, it IS becoming cheaper, and if this curve continues, it will probably take off when the economics make it an obvious choice.

I haven't yet bought into any HD disc format - here at home I watch HD from tiny thumb Sticks inserted into a WD Media player, but as already discussed, thumb sticks will never make a distribution format.

I still remember all the hassles I had convincing my clients to go from VHS to DVD.

The process continues .....
apit34356 wrote on 10/11/2009, 2:00 AM
When Apple replaces the DVD drive with BluRay, Coursedesign will fall in line with Apple's marketing of its now better because Apple has invented it with a new name. Apple could not call a DVD unit a DVD drive because they be admitting they did not create the technology, which they never really do, just borrow someone else's work and use it.

Now Apple's has brought a ARM and PowerPC IC manufacturer, they will be able claim and possibly customize some new designs, we hope. They have hired a couple of IBM chip designers and a top PowerPC server manager, so they have a lot more hardware talent now that before at a fraction of the cost of development.

So I expect big things for NET apps for iTunes and virtual networks. Don't be surprise if Apple tries to tie all Apple products together in a big virtual network on top of the net,( ie the old AOL modem network design). No third parties invited without permission. ;-)
DGates wrote on 10/11/2009, 3:06 AM
"China cares nothing about copyrights and piracy".

Exactly.

DGates wrote on 10/11/2009, 3:11 AM
Peter, I've never bought a Blu-ray movie. BUT, I rent them all the time from Netflix. It's only a couple more bucks a months.



PeterWright wrote on 10/11/2009, 3:18 AM
Yes, that sounds like a good choice, DGates.

I'm not personally one of the world's great movie watchers - it's hard enough to keep up with the films shown on free-to-air TV, so I rarely look elsewhere.

My concern is purely with the programs I produce.
ushere wrote on 10/11/2009, 4:17 AM
totally agree with peter - though we do have world movies on cable which makes watching paint peel in mongolia very interesting and a damn sight more entertaining than the majority of dross turned out by hollywood nowadays....

i still haven't bothered with bd since i give my clients sd dvd's and hd mp4 / mt2 files on all jobs. that way they can put the mp4's on pc / stream / whatever to / on pc, and m2t's to do with as they see fit. so far (three years of doing this) i have never been asked for a bd disk.

however, i'll buy a hd dvd tomorrow if the price for both recorder and media is right....

leslie