"Fox and WB were in talks with HD DVD on the idea of going exclusive HD DVD"

HD DVD group is always trying to talk to all the studios, and they probably started these rumors about FOX to demonstrate market interest. But FOX has very open about its dis-liking of the MS interface and MS in general. FOX has no love for MS and MS/NBC studios, and FOX remembers MS and Universal trying to muscle them over sat.and cable networks. FOX is not going to enable MS and friends for a mere 500M. Just quessing------------- but if it was just Toshiba in the deal, FOX probably would let a few "products" go that route.

"HD DVD group is always trying to talk to all the studios"
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And BD isn't???

There was no "trying" here. The meetings were alive and active.

Spin this as desperately as you want.

Please feel free to come up with arguments as well. If you participate in a discussion with only "it is, it is, it is, it is" you look kinda... childlike perhpaps?

The BozoRay twits out there that think this war is over are DELUDING themselves completely. This is just another battle in the campaign. The next battle will be in the courts no doubt. I can see Toshiba, Paramount, and Universal all suing Warner for breach. I can also see an AntiTrust suit happening as well.

This is completely delusional. All the way. The war is over. If it had been up to Toshiba the war had been over a long time ago. Toshiba wanted to pull out long before this became an issue. Microsoft wanted the fight though.

There will be no court battle. WB had no contractual obligations to the HD DVD camp, and they can change their will any time they want. There might be a class action lawsuit from consumers, but that is likely to be thrown out of court, or even more likely, WB will settle by offering to replace any HD DVD with a Blu-Ray equivalent.

There is absolutely no grounds for any kind of anti-trust suit here. What on earth would that be for?

Whether Hd-DVD is successful in the long run is unknown.

Only if you are emotionally invested in the HD DVD format, and if you are you have problems that can not be solved through an online forum.

Bluray is technically defiecent next to Hd-DVD, has zero interactivity, and no online component, not to mention poor quality picture.

Here we see the extent to which your delusions go. This is just sad. To your points.

Blu-Ray has zero interactivity: Rubbish. In fact Blu-Ray has far more interactivity than does HD DVD given the fact that BDj opens for any kind of interactivity you want. BDj is now standard on all Blu-Ray players being sold.

Blu-Ray has no online component: Again, pure and utter rubbish. The vast majority of Blu-Ray players have both wired and wireles network access.

Poor picture quality: This one is particularly odd, and the proof in the pudding so to speak. If you really think this is the case you need to either research the topic a little more, or you need to see a psychologist about your inability to relate to reality.

Both the theoretical and the real picture quality of Blu-Ray is the same as, or better than HD DVD. Given that both formats support the same video codecs, there are two things that determines image quality: The amount of video you can store on the disk it self and the amount of data you can transfer in real time from the player to the television.

Blu-Ray has significantly more storage capacity than does HD DVD, and it also supports 33% higher transfer rates (bandwidth). This means that theoretically Blu-Ray will have the better picture quality, and there is nothing the HD DVD camp can do to fix that.

Also, looking at real movies, the best HD movies today, in terms of picture quality, are no doubt the Blu-Ray releases of Pirates of the Caribbean, Pan's Labyrith, and a few others. These are the standards to which all other movies, Blu and HD are being compared.

Where the movies exist on both Blu and HD, they tend to use the same exact encoding and are therefore identical.

they will not be successful with a new HD format until Joe and Edna Lunch Bucket can make cheap copies.

What kind of drugs are you on? Do you want to share? Are you saying that until DVD-Jon, the DVD format was a complete and utter failure? As I said, it seems you need to try to find your way back to some sort of reality.

And let's not forget their are 3 major studios (Universal, Paramount, and Dreamworks) under long term contracts with Hd-DVD

Again, why don't you try the real world for a change. This simply isn't correct. Please get your facts straight before posting drivel like this. I do not know what kind of contracts Universal and Dreamworks are under, but given they didn't seem to have to be bought the way Paramount was, I doubt they are under stricter contracts that Paramount. Paramount is on a contract that currently has 12 months to go. Yep, that is correct, Paramount can start producing Blu-Ray disks early next year. If one year is your definition of "long term" then you really need to get in touch with some sort of reality. Seriously. Oh, and if you go looking, you will find that the Paramount contract was 18 months, and that was about 6 months ago.

I hope you get well soon.

There was no "trying" here. The meetings were alive and active.

They were, absolutely. The main reason was that WB and Fox had been brushing the HD DVD camp off for about 6 months. Fox would, as was said previously, probably not go with HD DVD unless they really had to. They have a serious problem with Microsoft for reasons that are not hard to understand.

WB was being approached again and again, and each time they rebuffed the HD DVD guys. The latest meeting was late last week, and a significant offer was extended according to the insiders. Again WB said no. It was simply a bad idea for WB.

Why would WB want to prolong this war for another two or three years? Can you explain that to me blink? We all know that extending the war would hurt all the players in this situation. Why would WB want to do that? Nobody has been able to answer this simple question. That simple question fully explains why WB went Blu.

This may be a bit off topic but I don't think it matters which format is adopted when the movie media costs twice what standard definition DVD costs. Last weekend I was on my couch reading the Sunday paper and noticed that 3:10 to Yuma comes out tomorrow. I own an A2 so I am always on the prowl for an HD version. Lets see, HD and BR 29.95... hmmm.... DVD 14.95... Looks like I will buy the SD version again.

My point is that in addition to adopting a standard format and getting the players in mass production, the industry will need to price the media at some point where it can compete with SD-DVD. At this point, I don't see much effort in that direction by any of the studios.

"the industry will need to price the media at some point where it can compete with SD-DVD."

I don't mind paying a premium for the VASTLY superior image quality of an HD-DVD or BluRay disc.

...or rent them from Netflix where BD and HD-DVD are the same price as SD DVD.

All this "talk" about BluRay vs. HD-DVD doesn't address which format allows you to actually make HD discs. I produce full-length (2+ hour) HD discs, not some short-form stuff on a red-laser disc, and there is only ONE blue-laser format that allows me to do that. BluRay. There is absolutely nothing the HD-DVD camp can say in their defense.

I think there is a very good chance within a year or so many will also be needing to burn avc/h264 encoded at 25MBS-30MBS to a disk. The first Blu-Ray movies I have are encoded in hd-mpeg2. All the others and most recent are avc/h264 that average 25-30 and peak around 35. Planet Earth on Blu-Ray uses V1 and the bit-rates are as high as 30MBS.

Nero will now encode a Blu-Ray Disk in avc/h264 at 30MBS. I have not tried it yet, that's higher than my source videos are (Standard HDV).

4eyes, without a doubt, a few directors will push the studios to produce a few +30M streams, but I expect a few manufacturers to boost the upper end first, then BD production houses to upp the rate once players can read it,( could be soon, like a special showing at NAB)

**I can also see an AntiTrust suit happening as well.**

Antitrust laws are very narrow in their application, and rightly so. Otherwise, we'd have neighborhood chain gas stations in federal court every week over price wars, and mergers would be a thing of the past.

I would be surprised if even the most paranoid, conspiracy-ridden theories imaginable over this move, even if they were provable by some stretch of the imagination, would meet the threshold for consideration under US antitrust laws.

Just because competition is dirty doesn't mean it's litigable.
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This is true, but take the example of the anti-trust lawsuit in August of 2000 by 28 states accusing the top five record labels of price fixing their CDs. The states filed the lawsuit in New York against Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Brothers music group, Universal Music Group, Bertelsmann AG, and the EMI Group Plc.
Added to the 28 states as defendants were major retailers MusicLand Stores Corp., Tower Records, and Trans World Entertainment Corp. This happened after those companies previously a court case about price fixing their CDs. The major label's minimum advertised price (MAP) policies violated state and federal antitrust laws. In addition to that the major labels penalized the retailers who sold below the MAP. Some of the retailers lost promotional funds that they claimed amounted to millions of dollars. Then NYS Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said: "Because of these conspiracies, tens of millions of consumers paid inflated prices to buy CD's..." Spitzer also said the FTC estimated damages to consumers at $480 million.

The five record labels lost the lawsuit:

"NEW YORK — The five largest music companies and three of the USA's largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle a lawsuit led by New York and Florida over alleged price-fixing in the late 1990s.
Attorneys general in the two states, who were joined in the lawsuit by 39 other states, said that the industry kept consumer CD prices artificially high between 1995 and 2000 with a practice known as "minimum-advertised pricing" (MAP).

The settlement will go to all 50 states, based on population. Consumers may be able to seek compensation.

Under MAP, the record companies subsidized ads by retailers in return for agreement by the stores to sell CDs at or above a certain price.

"This is a landmark settlement to address years of illegal price-fixing," New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said in a statement. "Our agreement will provide consumers with substantial refunds and result in the distribution of a wide variety of recordings for use in our schools and communities."

The companies, including Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG Music and EMI Group, plus retailers Musicland Stores, Trans World Entertainment and Tower Records, admitted no wrongdoing.

The companies have not practiced the pricing agreement since 2000. At that time, they agreed in settling a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission that they would refrain from MAP pricing for seven years. "

"Universal BMG and Warner said they simply wanted to avoid court costs and defended the practice."
"We believe our policies were pro-competitive and geared toward keeping more retailers, large and small, in business," Universal said in a statement. "

Of course the $20 refund was a joke as you all recall.

Whether these actions regarding the latest deals being made constitute anti-trust I am not sure. But given their past history and a political atmosphere friendly toward this sort of thing for the last seven years I wouldn't put it past them. Time will tell I suppose.

John

"Bluray is technically defiecent next to Hd-DVD, has zero interactivity, and no online component, not to mention poor quality picture. "

WHAT??!!

ahem - as of june 19...

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=360

and...

http://wesleytech.com/fox-to-promote-bd-live/339/

Among the BD industry ‘firsts’ from the Studios’ upcoming global release slate are picture in picture capability, enhanced viewing and surround sound modes with the ability to mix and match picture and sound, direct access to in-movie features through one of the four colored buttons on the BD remote and the most technically vibrant BD-Java interactive multi-player challenge and trivia games to date. The Studios’ slate also takes full advantage of BD-Live functionality this fourth quarter. Internet-connected consumers will enjoy unique, title specific “web-enabled” interactive features and games and “web-exclusive” downloadable content with the ability to connect and interact with other broadband BD users worldwide.

It appears that Microsoft did a good job on hedging their strategy by leaving an embedded player *out* of most of their models. It looks like even MS is looking at a BD add-on...

http://wesleytech.com/microsoft-considering-blu-ray-add-on-for-xbox-360/506

Among the BD industry ‘firsts’ from the Studios’ upcoming global release slate are picture in picture capability, enhanced viewing and surround sound modes with the ability to mix and match picture and sound, direct access to in-movie features through one of the four colored buttons on the BD remote and the most technically vibrant BD-Java interactive multi-player challenge and trivia games to date. The Studios’ slate also takes full advantage of BD-Live functionality this fourth quarter. Internet-connected consumers will enjoy unique, title specific “web-enabled” interactive features and games and “web-exclusive” downloadable content with the ability to connect and interact with other broadband BD users worldwide.
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Some of those features have been on HD DVD players for awhile, and all of them have had an ethernet port from the beginning. Not so with ethernet ports on BD players. Toshiba initially put them on the players to enable downloaded firmware to be installed easily on the players (not that the firmware updates always worked well by the way). They were also there for web enabled content which appeared on discs such as "Transformers" and others.

Much more importantly:

Many of the discs released don't enable the features in either format; and the quality of the discs in both formats is very inconsistent and not up to the specs bragged about.

That is why some of this hype makes me feel like a lot of people are being used as tools to repeat hype from a movie industry that is not giving the consumer quality for what they charge for these discs. The inconsistencies are really apparent on projected images in a home theater. It is not as apparent on the relatively smaller LCD and Plasma screens. That is why I don't join the "my format is superior to your format" bandwagon. Technical specs don't matter if they aren't implementing them well on the movie discs.

John

Technical specs don't matter if they aren't implementing them well on the movie discs.

Well, this is why you have customer review sites and the like, so that studios who try to get away with a shoddy job get caught. This has already made some studios re-master some of what they have put out on HDM, which is a good thing. Also, when you see some of the spectacular work being done now, you have to praise the studios for a job well done. Disney, for example, have released a plethora of excellent quality products, the Pirates movies, for example, are what everybody has to aspire to.

One major problem is that a lot of what is out there is only available on long-stored celluloid or digitally but scanned for DVD production. The former has problems with dust, bad storage, duplication etc, and the latter is usually too low quality for HD production.

For this last point, I can only recommend people get Blade Runner, I have mine on Blu, but I expect the result is identical on HD DVD. It is amazing to see a studio re-master a work with such excellent results. It is a marvel to watch, and one of the best movies ever to boot :-) Credit also goes to the restoration team of "Close Encounters" and "2001" both who did fantastic work with really old stuff. Oh, and no, I don't only have sci-fi movies :-)

Technical specs don't matter if they aren't implementing them well on the movie discs.
====================
Well, this is why you have customer review sites and the like, so that studios who try to get away with a shoddy job get caught. This has already made some studios re-master some of what they have put out on HDM, which is a good thing. Also, when you see some of the spectacular work being done now, you have to praise the studios for a job well done. Disney, for example, have released a plethora of excellent quality products, the Pirates movies, for example, are what everybody has to aspire to.

One major problem is that a lot of what is out there is only available on long-stored celluloid or digitally but scanned for DVD production. The former has problems with dust, bad storage, duplication etc, and the latter is usually too low quality for HD production.

For this last point, I can only recommend people get Blade Runner, I have mine on Blu, but I expect the result is identical on HD DVD. It is amazing to see a studio re-master a work with such excellent results. It is a marvel to watch, and one of the best movies ever to boot :-) Credit also goes to the restoration team of "Close Encounters" and "2001" both who did fantastic work with really old stuff. Oh, and no, I don't only have sci-fi movies :-)
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I am sorry, but the point I make is not just directed at the studios. It is also directed at the development of a "fan club" of people who tout the theoretical specs claiming things about the formats that just don't exist in practice. As you know, some people (puzzlingly)can get overly emotional about it. Then they beat each other up over formats that I can clearly see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears are not living up to the specs they tout. Neither format can claim implementational superiority as a result. It's hit or miss with the discs.
This is the fault of a combination of hype by the movie industry and hype from the brainwashed. And I mean "brainwashed" in the non-condescending sense that they don't even realize it because the hype sounds so convincing and it often comes from intelligent people who spend more time watching an oscilloscope than an actual commercial disc.

Checking user reviews is fine as long as one realizes that if you have a large collection of both Blu-Ray and HD DVD discs that are viewed and reviewed by fifteen home theater goers (in my home every weekend) and they all come to the conclusion that most Hi-Def discs are a big disappointment the industry is doing something wrong at our expense. And of course checking reviews so you don't buy the bad ones flies in the face of arguments about theoretical specs and format superiority. It invalidates the arguments especially when the disappointing ones (bad ones) are the norm.

If even most of the discs looked as good as Blade Runner you would hear few if any complaints. Unfortunately most of them are only a marginal improvement or no improvement over upscaled SD DVDs and quite frankly not worth what they charge, especially for those useless "combo discs". And they certainly aren't like what going from VHS to SD DVD was. Not even close.

John

And of course checking reviews so you don't buy the bad ones flies in the face of arguments about theoretical specs and format superiority

Not really. Let me use a car analogy, I haven't in a while. If Ferrari makes a nice car with a set of nice, theoretical, specs, it is not the fault of Ferrari if the school teacher who buys it insists on driving at only 25 mph. The studios are in the driver seat here, they can create good movies with these formats, but some times they are too lazy to do so. That is not the fault of the format.

I also disagree with you that the majority of movies are that much of a dissappointment, most of the HD stuff I have looks significantly better on my 1080p TV than does up-scaled DVDs. In fact, I think most of the up-scaled DVDs look terrible after getting used to HD material.

"In fact, I think most of the up-scaled DVDs look terrible after getting used to HD material."

I agree 100%

As I said, this is the collective opinion of fifteen people doing weekly viewing on a 120 inch screen in a Home Theater watching both Blu-Ray and HD DVD discs. The ages vary from 18-82 and consist of men, women, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

While some HD movies impress us all, most don't in that they are either too soft looking, have bad color, have audio tracks in newer formats that don't sound as good as an SD DVD with plain old Dolby Digital, have graininess that is not on the SD DVD equivalent, etc. Some really awful ones that come to mind are Fifth Element (BD), Taladega NIghts (BD), XXX (BD), (Christmas Vacation (HD DVD), Army of Darkness (HD DVD), U2 Rattle and Hum (HD DVD), and Traffic (HD DVD). Truly awful looking.
Some of them look and sound GREAT, and those are what makes us waste money on more of them.

This is not just my own subjective opinion and points to the failures in the industry. It also explains the slow adoption of Hi-Def when combined with the high cost of this junk. Even when and if Blu-Ray becomes the standard in Hi-Def, unless they improve the quality and lower the cost of the players and the discs, there will not be widespread conversion from ownership of SD DVDs to Hi-Def DVDs. As I said, we watch nearly an equal number of Blu-Ray discs and HD DVD discs.

I also have several hundred SD DVD discs to watch. While not all SD DVDs upscaled look great, the better ones look as good (or nearly so) upscaled as the "average" Hi-Def disc on my setup (according to the fifteen reviewers) and the average cost of the SD DVDs (many are used ones from Hollywood Video) was $5.00 instead of $30 for the Hi-Def discs. None of us are seeing a $25 improvement in video and audio on most of the Hi-Def discs.

Take a look at The HD DVD User's PQ & AQ Reference Thread!. This has widespread participation. Look at the top tier and count the number of animations that fall into that category. Here is the one for Blu-Ray discs. Same thing, animations. We see ZERO difference between upscaled SD animations and HD animations. It's a joke.


As I said - Hi-Def is a big disappointment because of an industry that is taking advantage of the consumer - a growing phenomenon, especially in the United States. So now, by Sony squashing Toshiba are we supposed to see a more consumer friendly attitude from the movie companies and the hardware manufacturers?

Moreover, most of my "collection" of hundreds of movies are used ones I bought dirt cheap. At this point, I would have no problem going back to what I used to do - RENT THEM. Who decided that we all needed to buy these discs instead of renting them like we all used to do? I'll tell you who. Stores like Walmart that started selling new ones for $5.00-$10.00 so that choosing between the rental costs and buying them outright became a toss-up. How many times are we going to watch these movies anyway?

John

Craftech, aren't you still using that 720p projector, and not a true 1920x1080 pixal projector? if so, then a lot of SD is going to look better at 720p than 1080p, plus 1080 will look "less" than great at 720.

Craftech, aren't you still using that 720p projector, and not a true 1920x1080 pixal projector? if so, then a lot of SD is going to look better at 720p than 1080p, plus 1080 will look "less" than great at 720.
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Apit,

The spec comparisons you are describing is more of the same thing I am talking about.
There will be no visible difference between those resolutions in a practical sense, only on paper and from the mouths of salesman.
Infamous is the 1080i vs 1080p sales hype used to say that Blu-Ray was visibly better than HD DVD because the discs are 1080p and not 1080i. Best Buy salesmen were trained to say that for awhile. I had that linked from Projector Central at one time as well.
There is no visible difference between the two. I explained why once, but I didn't search for my explanation. And no one has difinitive subjective comparisons to prove this with as well.

John