If they use this technology on the PS3 it will be the mark of death. A BIG part of my kids experience with video games is going to a friend’s house and bringing your games to play. Often this results in my kids telling me about a great game they played and we wind up buying it. So this kind of swapping actually increases sales. If Sony prohibits it, we won’t even buy a PS3! The Xbox360 has the same great games. Sony will just shoot themselves in the foot again.

I agree with you, if they try and cripple HD with this technology the people will not buy it. Imagine only being allowed to watch an HD movie in your family room because the DVD player in your bedroom can’t play it??? This will never fly!

~jr

Someone please tell me again just why we need HD-DVD or BluRay. With the progress in compression technology, we can already get an HD movie on an 8GB dual-layer DVD. I have no doubt that some new gee-whiz compression method a few years from now will improve on 264 by a factor of 2 or whatever.

So it might turn out that the physical HD-DVD and BluRay technologies will become useful as data storage devices, as opposed to movie delivery devices.

Perhaps you guys haven't been paying attention to the HD-DVD v Blu-Ray arguments. As I've pointed out in the past, HD-DVD is supported by the disc manufacturers because of the relatively low-cost of converting their existing equipment to make the HD-DVD discs. The entertainment industry (I.E. the content owners) like Blu-Ray because of the content control that spec offers.

My own prediction is that HD in the home is already doomed to be a huge market failure. While the two camps fight over cost vs control, MPEG4, Divx and WMV decoders are going to be integrated into more home DVD players and the consumers will make the decision for them. "Good enough" isn't always the best (look at VHS v Beta), but it's always what the consumer buys that wins.

My own prediction is that HD in the home is already doomed to be a huge market failure.

Why? Are you thinking that HD = HD-DVD/Blu-Ray?

As you are suggesting, MPEG4, DivX and WMV can also be used to deliver HD content.

What is a fact is that if Blu-Ray and HD-DVD keep squabbling long enough, they may both be superseded by HVD (Holographic Video Discs) which may possibly even appear commercially widespread (for pro use at least) in 2006.

HVD is at least two years away from commercial viability, and even longer for consumer players. But, they are coming.

Yes, MPEG4, Divx and WMV will deliver HDV in the short term (as in, now). It won't be full-resolution 1080p or probably not even 1080i, but 720p. Yes there will be compression and motion artifacts, but when faced with the sub-$100 MPEG4/Divx capable players on the market now versus the many hundreds of dollars for a HD-DVD/Blu Ray player, I think that the consumer is going to decide that MPEg on DVD is "Good enough".

Out from left-field will be the legal movie downloads that the movie industry is testing. It will be in a variation of MPEG4, so again, faced with the very high projected cost of HD Movie Discs versus the relatively low cost of downloaded movies, MPEG4 is still going to be "good enough". Either way, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray lose.

MPEG4, DivX and WMV can also be used to deliver HD content.

True, but are movies in those formats going to be sold on the shelves at Wal*Mart or through Amazon.com? If not, they are of no commercial importance in the HD market. What the big companies sell through retail accounts for the vast majority of what is watched at home. We independant media producers don't really count for anything.

"True, but are movies in those formats going to be sold on the shelves at Wal*Mart or through Amazon.com? "

If there's a market for them - you bet the content producers aren't going to ignore it. Just as soon as they find a way to screw the consumer out of fair-use of the content, they will have discs on the shelf.

We independant media producers don't really count for anything.

Exactly. The American public will buy what Walmart/Target/Best Buy/Circuit City tell them to buy, or show them is available.
Walmart, originally completely anti-HD, is now embracing HD, and while not much more can be said....be looking for BD disks in those sorts of stores reasonably soon. For those going to CES, you'll see some very forward-looking products. And they're not at all based around WMV/VC1, or DivX...

If there's a market for them - you bet the content producers aren't going to ignore it. Just as soon as they find a way to screw the consumer out of fair-use of the content, they will have discs on the shelf.
I'm confused by this statement. There is no Fair Use on these products. Making a backup copy doesn't fall under Fair Use, it falls under DCMA, but getting past the encryption falls into another twilight zone for the time being. Maybe once BD/HD-DVD are just about ancient, Congress will pass some new law that will make sense. Seriously though, the content owners are pretty adamant about copying media not being a viable thing for disk purchasers. The majority of buyers won't care, because they don't copy them anyway. When's the last time soccer mom sat down to rip a copy of "Finding Nemo?" *Most* of the people interested in ripping media from a video disk (IMO) have an illicit purpose in mind. Like giving a copy to their best friend. BD/HD-DVD, and HVD all have technologies in place to prevent that as best they can for the short term. Give it a week, some teen in Helsinki will figure out a crack.

*Most* of the people interested in ripping media from a video disk (IMO) have an illicit purpose in mind.

I agree with this statement, at least as it applies to making copies of the disk. However, there is a whole 'nother set of uses that much of the DRM and other technologies preclude, and which I therefore object to.

I want to watch movies on other devices. If that movie is only available on DVD (or whatever HD delivery format becomes standard), and I want to watch it on my iPod or on my laptop (that doesn't have a DVD drive) or put it on my TiVo device or whatever, I feel I should be able to do that.

I bought it and it's mine.

My skin crawls at the thought of having Big Brother (whether it is Sony, some other big corporate entity, or the government) looking over my shoulder and telling me what I can or cannot do with MY PROPERTY.

Of course, part of the whole debate is whether it really IS my property. We in the software business use "licensing" whereby we retain ownership, but until recently, no company really tried to enforce the logical consequences of such an arrangement, namely the idea that such a license could be revoked or in some way controlled after the buyer has taken possession.

I also don't like the idea of creating a new class of criminals. Much of the behavior that has been heretofore legal (like taping an LP album so you could play it in your car's tape player) will be now termed a violation of the law.

The good news is that stupid laws generally don't last too long. It won't take many months or years before some senator, judge, or famous person will get nailed by someone who uses these laws to defeat them for political purposes (remember all the political nominees defeated a decade ago because they failed to withhold taxes when paying their nannys?). This will cause a furor, and the laws will be repealed, or at least toned down considerably.

At least that's my hope ....