Comments

DJPadre wrote on 1/7/2007, 7:46 AM
and in 6 months, we'll be able to rip them too... lol

god knows why they bother withal this DRM and copy protection garbage.. at least WB arent letting the format wars get them.. lol
Spot|DSE wrote on 1/7/2007, 9:43 AM
You can rip the HD DVD discs now.
JJKizak wrote on 1/7/2007, 12:03 PM
Heard another rumor today that Toshiba will record both the HD-DVD and Standard DVD file on the same disc so that it will work in a standard/HD-DVD player.
JJK
Steve Mann wrote on 1/8/2007, 12:47 AM
In early September, Warner Brothers filed for a patent named: "multilayer dual optical disk". Baiscally it's de-ja vu of their decade old patent on the dual-format DVD (CD on one side, DVD on the other).

It is yet another "what were they thinking?" moment in the long tortured death of HD media and their playback hardware.

Because of the licensing issues involved - every HD-DVD title triggers a set of license and royalty payments and every Blu-Ray DVD triggers another set of settlements. Some overlap - but the cost of the dual disc has to be higher.

If you own a Blu-Ray player, why in any conceivable reasoning would you pay the extra dollars for a dual format disc?

If your movie studio has staked your home distribution fortune on one format or the other - why would you allow your title to be distributed in the other camps format?

This, as most things HD\BD are, is yet another head-scratcher.

Steve M.
farss wrote on 1/8/2007, 3:04 AM
If your movie studio has staked your home distribution fortune on one format or the other - why would you allow your title to be distributed in the other camps format?
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That's the bit I really don't get. Why are the studios staking their fortunes on one camp or the other?
The sale of a copy of their movie is a sale regardless of what format it's sold in, why tie the distro rights to any camp?

And why does either the BD or HD DVD camps think it helps their cause signing studios to exclusive deals? No studio has exclusivity on producing the next must own movie. Surely it's in both camps interests to have ALL studios offering their content in their format. By making the studios choose one over the other forces a rift that puts both camps in a weakened position.

Or maybe they want consummers to have to buy both a BD and a HD DVD player?

Bob.
Steve Mann wrote on 1/9/2007, 10:45 PM
"That's the bit I really don't get. Why are the studios staking their fortunes on one camp or the other?"

Well, in the case of Sony - they own a huge stake in Blu-Ray. It cost the other studios a lot of money to be a member of the working group of one camp or the other. I don't recall which, but only a couple of studios are members of both camps.

Steve M
apit34356 wrote on 1/10/2007, 4:23 AM
"That's the bit I really don't get. Why are the studios staking their fortunes on one camp or the other?" The one real answer is inventory. The cost of managing two separate product lines can be expense, plus if one format fails, the cost of liquidating the inventory can be extremely hard on the bottom line.

Gluing two disks together, seems simple, but the combined disks must be light and stable over a large temperature range. They been gluing CD & DVD disks together for a long time. the question is whether the different media surfaces can be bonded together without creating distortions on/in the media surfaces during the bonding process and then during use. Sometimes, heating of surfaces, (laser reading), will cause different media to expand at different rates. "Read" red lasers produce more secondary heat than blue, so, a lot of questions of durable in long term use exist.
Steve Mann wrote on 1/11/2007, 10:49 AM
The disc structures are different. HD-DVD is made very much like red-laser DVDs where the data bits are pressed into the subsrate then a reflective layer is sprayed on top of it. Any replicator who can make SD DVD's can likely make HD-DVD's for a small investment in their equipment upgrades. Blu-Ray on the other hand imprints the data into the reflective layer and thin covers it with a very thin layer of plastic. You may have seen the same coating marketed in SD DVD's as "Tuff-Skin".

Because the different formats are so different, putting them on the same plastic is probably fairly easy, but it adds to the cost.

Again, it's a head scratcher as to why. Maybe WB is establishing their position in a market segment that doesn't yet exist.

Steve