Lee Scoggins

Marc, to me it appears after reading the article that BluRay already won the race to market by having machines out in Japan now.

There was a compelling story on BluRay at ZD Net today that describes how BluRay is adding features to woo the film studios.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-5309378.html

no fears alone at night she's sailing through the crowd
in her ears the phones are tight and the music's playing loud
~skateaway

Marc Colella

I think the Blu-Ray machines out in Japan are only recorders. I don't think a Blu-Ray machine is available on the market that'll play pre-recorded media (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
It doesn't look like the Blu-Ray group has everything decided yet, and there isn't yet a standard.

I found this snippet of this article (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117242,00.asp) regarding different standards:



HD-DVD looks to have at least a 6 month head start with machines in North America, and with more help as the XBOX2 hits the market before the PS3. The number of titles available early could really make the difference.
Peter Jackson already expressed interest at getting his LOTR trilogy available in High Definition DVD as soon as a format is available (which would mean HD-DVD, as New Line is a Warner-own company).

Things are getting interesting.

Michael St. Clair

Yeah, for about a year now.

Of course, the Blu-Ray physical media specs were just finalized a couple of weeks ago. And the content specs are still not finalized.

So, the "Blu-Ray" machines that you can buy in Japan right now are Blu-Ray in name only. Saying they have won the race to market is nothing but spin and hype. You can't buy one pre-recorded disc and play it on the unit. They can't market a disc, because they'd look like fools when it wasn't compliant with the actual spec down the road. There's also no guarantee that the current players and blanks will have full compatibility with the 'real' players and blanks that hit the market after the spec is finalized.

Tony_Ramos

yeah, we should all be resigned to seeing both formats in the market.

but i'm betting the studios go HD-DVD. you've got warner on that side, the biggest studio, and, Microsoft has stronger DRM measures.

Plus, the fact that bluray can already be recorded is probably a bad thing as far as piracy is concerned.

Also, the bluray internet features and connectivity are not really necessary or appealing to non-broadband users, of which a majority of american households are still using 56k, if anything.

Lee Scoggins

My understanding is that Warner has not decided which format to back. Also Warren Lieberfarb left Warner and there is much bad blood there and he is a primary spokesperson for HD-DVD.



I agree that software is the real limiting factor. The ZDNet makes for some interesting reading. I can see where the PC data storage could happen soon with those companies already working on BluRay readers/writers.



I doubt that currently available players would be made obsolete in the future. That would be a mistake. At the very least, on the software front BluRay is ahead due to the Columbia commitment and the huge hidef transfers they already did.

I just hope Hollywood can unite behind one format and really push it with a consistent message for consumers.

no fears alone at night she's sailing through the crowd
in her ears the phones are tight and the music's playing loud
~skateaway

imported_Brian-W

Can you prove this? What is your information based off of?



Again, what's this based on aside from the fact you don't like Sony? For a sucky launch as you claim, it didn't stop the PS2 from taking the world by storm, something Xbox still hasn't come close to doing.

Tony_Ramos

PS3 is once again using a never before seen architecture. I think it's using Risc based processors, at least 3 or so of them, and the big plan is to allow distributed processing for all kinds of cross-network applications. Not only is this plan, which is way ahead of its time, never work, they'll be faced with the same problems they had with the dual-processor architecture of the PS2. Essentially, a lot of the games will have good graphics that run slow, with few onscreen characters, and have no gameplay whatsoever, b/c the designers are going to spend all their time just trying to get code running!


Not to mention that Microsoft is scooping up all the most recent major game releases in either exclusives or cross-platform launches. Their game HALO 2 is one of the 3 most anticipated games of this year on any system or PC. Sony can't say that about any one of their games. San Andreas isn't even being marketed yet, so it doesn't count.

I've been through every major US hardware release of the last 20 years and been an observer of the japanese and European launches. i don't think I'm an expert but I've been around long enough to be confident in my opinion, and that is, Sony is going to screw up this game console release with proprietary like they are screwing up almost every other sector of their business, according to every business publication in this country.

Lee Scoggins

Tony, you have an overly negative view of Sony. See my thread on the financial performance of Sony. They are having very good results this year and are in the midst of a turnaround.

Yes, Sony does like to use proprietary architecture but often that is good. It has helped consumers get more performance from TVs, led to DSD and Super Audio development, and may ultimately lead to some cool games.

Anyway, this is a bit of tangent from a BluRay discussion isn't it?

no fears alone at night she's sailing through the crowd
in her ears the phones are tight and the music's playing loud
~skateaway

imported_Brian-W

I've been through every major US hardware release since they started releasing hardware, in the early seventies. Every game system with the exception of XBox uses new architecture. If that was soooooooo bad, then game systems would have imploded long before Sony came on the scene.

I've also been developing games since the NES days, and IMHO, Sony isn't going to screw anything up in the game world. They'll be successful yet again.



And what do you think that "cross-platform" launch platform is? PS2 (or soon to be PS3). Know why? Because the XBox versions can't sell enough to justify keeping it just on that platform.

Tony_Ramos

I think this is somewhat important to the format war b/c the game consoles will allow a lot of lower income consumers try out the new formats. They will alos increase the capacity of the production facilities of those formats.


I don't think sony will ruin their console business, I believe they will repeat the mistakes they made with the PS2 launch by creating an over ambitious hardware architecture that no one can program for. Antialiasing wasn't even evident on PS2 games until about the third generation of titles.

The fact that X-Box will be easy to program for and have cross-platform releases will help them have more A list titles on their system, as is pretty much the case right now. Microsoft has finally gotten developer support for X-Box, and those relationships will extend to Xbox 2. They're even in talks with Square, bought Rare, got Sega, and have hinted at wanting Nintendo support. They've already got almost eveyr old Nintendo stalwart like Capcom. If they can get Take Two Interactive and launch on-time, they WILL take the market share.

David Coleman

Does anyone know which lossless audio codecs have been reviewed by either HD-DVD or Blu- Ray? What are the lossless codecs out there? The only one's I know of are MLP and DTS is suppose to come out with one? I know that WMA and APPLE Lossless is out there but don't know if it's multi- channel? What are the approximate compression ratio of all the formats?