Who is going to win the Format War and why? (1 Viewer)

[Chris S]

In Nils defense, I'll admit that I don't trust a lot of the people at AVS. There are good reasons I read this board and not that one.

But back on topic...

I wouldn't simply say that because a majority of the people are seeing things one way that it must be true. I have yet to see BD in person and when I do I'll judge for myself. Until then I can not make a determination on which is better (arguably if thats even possible at this point). I know how others that I respect feel about the format (Bill, Peter, Simon, etc.) but I plan on forming my own opinion on how it looks.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

If Robert want's to continue to make this personal, I'll just say one thing is for certain.... RobertR has made it near the top of my "Do Not Trust A Word They Say" list. His set of steak knives are in the mail.

 

[RobertR]

But at the very least, it would cause a reasonable person not to automatically accept the minority opinion.

The negatives for the initial BD releases from people who have seen them are quite substantial in numbers (Nils never did provide links to the "many" reviews that think BD is "spectacular").

 

[Andrew Bunk]

I'm not putting the poster's name in this thread because I'm not trying to point fingers. Just trying to show that I did not make this up. I do not put words in other people's mouth. I do not have an agenda.

Feel free to check the thread I referenced if you feel the need.

 

[Brandon_T]

Shock shock shock. I have pretty much stayed away from HT hardware for about two years due to the lack of funds, just stayed in the movies and after hours lounge. However things are looking up and was curious about the upcoming HD DVD stuff but didn't know much about it. Of course it seems about impossible to find any decent talk about stuff, just a bunch of sniping back and forth about semantics and other meaningless bull shit. Thanks for making my decision, I will wait maybe another year or so before I revisit this area....you guys are supposedly adults, act like it.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Everyone: Please stop the petty bickeing and silly partisanship and swipes at other members in your posts. Really, this thread is close to being closed. Stop immediately.

 

[Edwin-S]

I blame both of these companies for the fiasco. Toshiba wanted to beat Sony to market so badly that they knowingly dumped a bug-ridden player into the marketplace and basically said, "here it is suckers, thanks for paying us 500 bucks to be our "beta testers". The firmware fix appears to have solved the problems, but it shouldn't have required it in the first place. Furthermore, Toshiba sent their player to market with the knowledge that they did not have the production capacity to meet demand......any demand. Toshiba wasn't even prepared to meet the limited demand from the niche market known as the "early adopter videophile". Their strategy has been a pathetic "I'm going to be first, no matter what it costs" mentality. It was like some little kid going, "I beat you....I beat you......Nyahhhh". Toshiba's promotion of HD DVD has been pathetic,which is just as well since they were n't prepared to meet demand at any level. If it wasn't for HTF I wouldn't even know that the format has been released. I haven't seen one ad for the thing...anywhere. Toshiba's introduction of HD DVD has been uniformly bad, and in Western Canada (where I live) it hasn't just been bad.......it's been non-existent.

Can I check out an HD DVD player where I live? NO! Will I be able to check out a player when, and IF, they become available? NO......because Toshiba in its wisdom has apparently decided that "Visions Electronics" is going to be the initial distributor of HD DVD in Western Canada. That means the small dedicated shop ( where I buy most of my HT equipment) isn't going to get HD DVD players for the forseeable future, and I, for one, wouldn't walk across the street to piss on a "Visions" if it was on fire. TOSHIBA, YOU SUCK......and that is saying something since most of my video equipment from players to the TV is TOSHIBA.

SONY has screwed the pooch because their response to Toshiba's pathetic "challenge" has been to release, apparently, inferior software product in a sad attempt to blunt the "First to Market" advantage: an advantage that is laughable, since it is next to impossible to get HD DVD players.....thanks to Toshiba's moronic early release strategy. I'd say more, but this post would just turn into an even longer, boring diatribe. Suffice it to say these companies have made a hash out of these new format introductions.

 

[Dave H]

Edwin,

All first generation CE have their share of bugs. I think Toshiba responded very quickly with the firmware to correct the issues. $500 for a player like this and it's technology is an amazing deal....even if you had to deal with bugs until the firmware became available.

Distribution has been tight everywhere. You could always order it online from a reputable dealer...and return it if you are unhappy....or even sell it.

Where Toshiba (nor studios) didn't fail on its rollout is with the amazing picture quality. This is the reason 90% of people on AVS kept the player despite the issues at the time. The Dolby Digital isn't too shabby either (with 5.1 Tru HD soon to be available via firmware).

I am still going to wait things out as I really don't have a preference for either format (though I don't like the crap Sony has been pulling and its marketing spin). Hopefully, within 6-12 months I will be able to make a decision. In the meantime, I'll be sticking with and enjoying SD.

Robert Crawford: Just my thought, but I do think these campaign signatures for blu-ray (or HD DVD) are inviting a lot of the bickering.

 

[Austan]

I totally agree with the first part... First to market is a double edge sword... you get all the complements as well as all the complaints... Did anyone notice one of the first items to be critiqued on the Samsung player reviews was bootup time and load times? Hmmm... Maybe those less then spectacular reviews of the HD-A1 from "published" websites do weigh heavy in the court of public opinion...

Sony's media blunder is not that much better... The only thing that is saving them is they let Samsung launch first to get "all the complements as well as all the complaints" for Blu-Ray...

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

Here in Calgary, I have had no trouble running into HD DVD displays. The BB's have them and the London Drugs stores too. They have stock ...

Just didn't see it at FS near where I live ... but that is also not one of their marquee locations.

Regards

 

[Edwin-S]

The main point was that they went to market with the knowledge that they couldn't even produce enough machines to serve a limited segment of the market. Their marketing strategy was designed to cause problems for and put pressure on the BD camp, not meet the needs of consumers. Sony's marketing spin might be disagreeable because they tried to paint HD DVD in a bad light technologically, but at least they didn't go to market with a problematic machine in a cheap attempt to undercut the competition. I would say Toshiba's marketing strategy has been the dirtier pool and has created image problems for disc based HD as a whole because both of these formats ended up being released before they were ready for primetime.

I have removed the sig statement. I still believe that Blu-ray has the best longevity factor; however, in all honesty, I have decided that the signature's statement was unsupportable, as long as Sony does not clean up their act. If they want the Blu-ray format to succeed then they have to do some pretty hard work to get themselves out of the hole they have dug. They had better have their ducks lined up when they release their machine, which means proper support for all audio codecs, HDMI 1.3, and, at the least, VC-1 encoding in the pipeline; especially at the prices they asking for these machines. If they fail to do it then they have killed their format before it even has a chance to show what it can do. Poorly encoded transfers are not going to cut it with the crowd that they are, supposedly, aiming these machines at. Possibly, more later.

 

[Dave H]

I can understand what Sony has been doing. I mean a company is always going to state its product is better than its competitor. But, it seems we should have more than we are getting from blu-ray at the moment (it can change) and price.

The Toshiba player performs (and performed) as it was intended. Yes, it's a bit clunky and there were freeze problems which were corrected. But, it performs outstanding high definition video and audio -- better than what Blu-ray and Sony has promised up to this point. First generation players DO have issues (as the Samsumg model is now having). But, it seems Toshiba's problems are largely fixed by the reports I'm reading.

Never has a first generation piece of technology offered such outstanding DVD and HD video and audio quality for $500.

The only reason I don't have it today is because I want to see how this war plays out because anything can still happen and there isn't a ton of HD content available (though the SD upconversion is quite good).

 

[Dave Moritz]

Well after Toshiba had an embarasing roll out with HD-DVD. Now Sony turns around and blunders there Blu-ray roll out. While I would like to say I am glad that Blu-ray is finally on retail shelves. But after seeing the Samsung Blu-ray player at my local BB. I walked away not completly impressed with what I saw so far. They had House Of Flying Daggers Blu-ray disc playing on a Samsung HDTV and I was disapointed that the picture was not as crisp and seemed to lack depth. The player itself was a nice looking peice of equipment but I don't think I could drop $1k on a Samsung player.

It's embarasing that Sony seemed to do such a piss poor job at the transfers for there roll out. And while Toshiba had there issues with HD-DVD at least the MPEG4 transfers I saw for HD-DVD looked better than the Blu-ray title I saw today. I expect the Sony player to have very few bugs if any since the delayed there player yet again. On top of that I also expect Blu-ray to have MPEG4 discs available by the time the Sony player hits local retailers. And since Toshiba seems to have fixed the bugs in there players. I will have no problem moving to HD-DVD if Sony cant get there act together! IMHO Blu-ray brought more to the table than HD-DVD but if Sony blunders Blu-ray. HD-DVD is a very good product and can easily end up in my home theater instead of Blu-ray. At this time I am still planning to purchase a Sony Blu-ray HD player and maybe a HD-DVD player soon after that.

I honestly do think you can deny that for $500 Toshiba does not offer a huge bang for the buck. Especially after releasing a fix for there HD-DVD players fixing the bugs that the player has. I say lets see how Blu-ray discs look when MPEG4 discs become available. At that time if HD-DVD still looks better than I would not consider HD-DVD to be inferior at that point. And I have to say that I saw a nice selection of HD-DVD's at BB that I would like to have. They did not seem to have any HD-DVD players but they had the movies. The HD-DVD display has been gone for almost two weeks now. And the Samsung Blu-ray display is right around the corner from the HD-DVD discs. At least its that way at my local BB store here in Phoenix, AZ.

So both formats have had a messed up roll out. The question remains what will Sony do to correct this? And how long will it take to release MPEG4 titles on Blu-ray? If Blu-ray is going to have a chance they will have to offer MPEG4 titles just like HD-DVD does.

HD movies on disc

 

[Chris S]

DaVid Boulet has some interesting information over at this thread which possibly explains why Sony felt they needed to launch Blu-ray before it was truly ready.

The short of it is that Sony knew they weren't ready but "took a bullet for the team" because they were concerned that HD-DVD might have too strong of a foothold in the market by the time Blu-ray launched. They just needed to deliver something even if it wasn't the best. Definitely an interesting theory that makes sense given what we've seen so far.

 

[RobertR]

Yes, I read that post, and it's interesting. The problem is that the rush job may backfire on them. The initial BD releases are NOT giving a good impression to most people, and may turn them off the format before it really gets going. A poll on AVS is running 70% against keeping the Samsung among its buyers. Not good.

 

[Chris S]

If you believe the rumors we could see VC-1 encoded discs in retail stores as early as a couple of months.

 

[Dave Moritz]

What would be better VC-1 or MPEG4? I am not sure I would be thrilled about MS VC-1 being used. It is my understanding that MPEG4 is better than VC1. I may be wrong but this is what I understand.

VC-1 Profiles and Levels


ProfileLevelMaximum Bit RateRepresentative Resolutions by Frame Rate (Format)Simple
Low
96 kilobits per second (Kbps)
176 x 144 @ 15 Hz (QCIF)

Medium
384 Kbps
240 x 176 @ 30 Hz
352 x 288 @ 15 Hz (CIF)
Main
Low
2 megabits per second (Mbps)
320 x 240 @ 24 Hz (QVGA)

Medium
10 Mbps
720 x 480 @ 30 Hz (480p)
720 x 576 @ 25 Hz (576p)

High
20 Mbps
1920 x 1080 @ 30 Hz (1080p)*
Advanced
L0
2 Mbps
352 x 288 @ 30 Hz (CIF)

L1
10 Mbps
720 x 480 @ 30 Hz (NTSC-SD)
720 x 576 @ 25 Hz (PAL-SD)

L2
20 Mbps
720 x 480 @ 60 Hz (480p)
1280 x 720 @ 30 Hz (720p)

L3
45 Mbps
1920 x 1080 @ 24 Hz (1080p)*
1920 x 1080 @ 30 Hz (1080i)
1280 x 720 @ 60 Hz (720p)

L4
135 Mbps
1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz (1080p)*
2048 x 1536 @ 24 Hz
MPEG4



Use Scenario Resolution & Frame Rate Example Data Rates Mobile Content 176x144, 10-15 fps 50-60 Kbps Internet/Standard Definition 640x480, 24 fps 1-2 Mbps High Definition 1280x720, 24p 5-6 Mbps Full High Definition 1920x1080, 24p 7-8 Mbps

 

[Sean Bryan]

VC-1 is the codec that has been used on HD DVD so far, and the consensus is that it is excellent. This is what everyone is hoping for on BD.

AVC hp (MEPG-4) hasn't shown up on any US HD DVDs yet, so there isn't much anyone can say about it's quality (from an end-users perspective).

I do believe it was the codec used on the HD DVD demo disc, and that demo disk had some excellent video quality. But then again, demo discs don't mean all that much considering that the bit rate is likely to be much higher than what is used on actual releases.

I also think that AVC was used on the Japanese HD DVD of Resident Evil, and that was reported to have disappointing picture quality. But who knows the real reason for that.

 

[Edwin-S]

Then I got a load of bad info because I was under the impression that "Visions Electronics" was going to be distributing HD DVD in Western Canada. I was in Calgary just a couple of days ago. I wandered into a Future Shop, near my motel, to see if they had one of the machines. They didn't so I just assumed that no other stores would have them either. I should have checked some of the other shops, such as Best Buy, but it didn't occur to me.

 

[Rob_HD]

You missed the meaning of what I said.

With HD DVD, you can use your existing DVD burner and burn a Dual layer DVD as an HD DVD 9 disc, which will play about 20 to 30 minutes of HD content on the Toshiba HD DVD player.

But the Samsung cannot read a DVD burned as BD 9 format disc. This is a big deal.

This is nothing to do with BD R/RE or HD DVD R/RW discs or burners, but rather, is about getting one's own HD content onto 9 Gig DVDs in HD DVD or BD format.