I went back and read a previous response to this article, and felt compelled to respond to it...
cohominous wrote:Why HD DVD?
Standardization - All HD DVD players conform to an EXISTING spec (Uh... except the upcoming 51GB HD DVD players) although going forward all new Blu Ray players will also live up to basically the same spec except for region coding. So this point has an expiration date.
Actually, it is highly likely that existing HD-DVD players will be able to use the 51GB discs with a firmware upgrade.
Now, for the record, I really really hate the idea of having no choice but to upgrade firmware in order to watch a disc (to date, as far as I know, pretty much all HD-DVD player firmware has been optional... it improves performace, but is not required to watch a newer disc).
However, what HD-DVD may have to do once sometime in the future is something that Blu-Ray has already made a career out of. Plus, the problem with Blu-Ray is that the standards are changing in such a way that older stand-alone players may not even be able to utilize them at all, not even with a firmware upgrade (i.e. interactive features, etc).
So, while still not 100% ideal, HD-DVD still comes out ahead in this case.
Less Copy Protection - Although HD DVD's lack of adequate copy protection is specifically why some companies chose to go with Blu Ray, I'll use this as a HD DVD plus. Then I'll add in something about load times even though many newer Blu Ray players load much more quickly than HD DVD counterparts.
Copy protection is all well and good, so long as it doesn't complicate use of the official product. This goes right back to my whole point about Blu-Ray making a career out of needing firmware upgrades.
The problem is that Blu-Ray keeps changing the standards and adding new types of copy protection (i.e. the recent BD+ protection on newer Fox discs). And in order to use these discs, people need to upgrade their firmware.
This is very annoying because not everyone has Hi-Speed internet, and even many of those who do are not going to want to keep it constantly hooked up to their movie player.
People want to buy a movie player, buy a movie in that format, pop it in, and watch it. That's it... the end. They don't want constant ongoing updates. That's just ridiculous.
On top of which, this new copy protection was something that the Blu-Ray camp figured would take a decade for any hackers to crack through. However, from what I understand it was hacked within just a couple of weeks. Woo-hoo.. way to go Blu-Ray and Fox... you just significantly inconvenienced your legitimate paying customers to slow down some hackers by a couple of weeks (who are hacking into a format that as of now is only a niche market anyway, so it's not like there's some huge demand for bootlegs in this format).
If anything, as a consumer who prefers buying the legit product, if these trends continue and it becomes more and more difficult to use newer movies in this format, making it ridiculously complicated, then it may actually push people like myself to seek out high-quality bootlegs that get past all of the B.S. that goes with this sort of thing.
The bottom line is that while it's good to prevent piracy, those who are truely determined to pirate a movie are going to find a way to do it. These copy protection efforts that prevent legitimate customers who are throwing their hard-earned dollars down on the table for a movie from being able to simply go home and watch it are ridiculous. Even if they manage to prevent and detour a handful of would-be pirates, the time, effort, and money that goes into developing these types of protection, as well as the inconvenience to the legitimate customers just don't seem to justify it.
The studios that prefer this clearly have their heads up their butts. Their so determined to stop piracy (which is a lost cause), that they are letting it blind them to the reality of the situation.
Features - Although I don't much care about features, it might support my argument so I'll include them and leave out the fact Blu-Ray players will support the same features well before before the vast majority of consumers ever purchase a player.
But this still won't help the people who already have players, which is still a pretty large amount of people. Aside from PS3, most older players will not be able to support these features, not even with newer firmware. This is where HD-DVD has an advantage. They established more of a standard from the get-go, thus not screwing over the early adopters.
Better Price - I'll tell everyone HD DVD is selling so cheaply primarily because of low production costs rather than tell people Toshiba is heavily subsidizing it's hardware to gain market penetration. Hee hee.
So what? It's cheaper. Why do I care why it is cheaper? As long as they aren't murdering people to make it happen or something, then I don't see why that matters.
Blu-ray has more studio support - TRUE. But we're thiiiis close.
It has more studio support, but the actual number of movies released in the format is only slightly higher than what has been released on HD-DVD. Plus, the studios exclusive to HD-DVD, Univeral and Paramout, have pretty strong back catalogs of titles that they can continue to put out. If a ton of great movies are being released, and in roughly the same number as the competing format, then who cares how many different studios are actually putting out those releases?
b]Higher Capacity/bitrate[/b] - What the... TRUE again? You don't need it! Wait, tell me again why HD DVD worked so hard to develop a triple layer 51GB disc?
Probably to appease and eventually sway those studios that for one reason or another feel that the extra space is needed. Thus far, I haven't seen any actual evidence that it truely is needed, but at least the space will be there if it is.
ractivity[/b] - TRUE. But I'll throw in that old blu-ray players don't have it
even though the people reading probably haven't bought ANY HD player yet and by the time they do, Blu-Ray players will have it standard.
It's funny how you seem to feel that anyone who has boughten a Blu-Ray player so far and will be screwed over by this change are just inconsequential and not note worthy enough to be of concern.
You are trying to debunk some points of this article, however I find the screwing over of early adopters to be more of a problem and and issue, and your brushing over it is far more debunkable than anything you are trying to debunk in this article.
get[/b] - They sell HD DVD's too! (online that is - no stand-alone HD DVD players in the actual STORES. Unless you want to buy an XBOX add on.)
They aren't selling Blu-Ray players in stores exclusively because they think it's a better format, they are getting paid to do so.
blockbuster[/b] - TRUE AGAIN! But only in 9 out of 10 stores nationwide...
I admit that the Blockbuster thing is a bigger deal (even more so than the Target thing, since Blockbuster made the decision on their own, and it wasn't influenced by some kind of pay-off from what I understand).
However, the video rental business isn't what it used to be, and many stores in general are shutting down because of these online video rental businesses. So while more physical stores are carrying Blu-Ray, physical stores in general are slowly going the way of the dinosaur.
Paramount got bags of cash - TRUE. And the reason most people dislike the move is not because of the money per se. It's the fact that consumers were loudly voicing the opinion they want blu-ray with purchases and Paramount extended the format war by switching - effectively prolonging a winner.
I admit, when I heard this, I was frustrated by the war being prolonged. At the time I did not yet have an HD-DVD player, and was annoyed that I wouldn't be able to get some movies, such as Transformers, on Blu-Ray. But since then, I bought an HD-DVD player, and have had more complications with my Blu-Ray player, and have found HD-DVD to just be a more solid format. So, while the war being prolonged is annoying, if it means giving the more consumer friendly format more of a fighting chance, then I'm all for it.
Besides, why does it matter that this annoyed existing Blu-Ray player owners anyway? You seem to feel that the fact that many of them will be screwed over when the Blu-Ray standards change doesn't matter since the only concern should be the masses who will adopt the format later on. If we aren't going to worry about early adopters being upset and screwed over by the standards changing and potentially creating compatibility issues with future Blu-Ray discs on their players, then why should we worry about them being upset over the Paramount deal? What's the difference if a movie doesn't come out on Blu-Ray at all, or if it does come out on Blu-Ray and is incompatible with some people's players? Do you have some kind of list of a hirarchy of what concerns of and potential problems for early Blu-Ray adopters are most important and worthwhile and which ones are not? If you do, I think you should post it so all of us can go out of our way to conform to your inconsistent and rather contrived standards.
Conclusion
I like HD DVD. I don't like Blu Ray. Why? Because I can overlook the many advantages blu ray brings while trumpeting any advantage HD DVD may hold even though those "advantages" will disappear before most consumers make their choice.
Aside from the discs having a larger storage capacity than current HD-DVD discs, which exactly are the many advantages of Blu-Ray?
Let's put aside all of the "politics" of this (i.e. studio support, what stores carries what, money pay-offs, etc), and just look at the technologies in and of themselves.
They both do essentially the same thing in playing Hi-Def movies. One format has a pretty solid standard established from the get-go (which may have only one major change/upgrade on the horizon, which can be fixed with a one-time required firmware update) with interactive features being available from day one. The other has to keep updating and changing their standards, requiring numerous firmware upgrades, not all of which fully fix the problems, and eventually firmware won't even be enough to comply with upcoming standard (which will be to finally add in the same types of interactive features that HD-DVD has had since day one), thus frustrating the consumer on an ongoing basis.
The only truely reliable and future-proof player that seems to currently exist is a gaming system that uses these movies as a secondard function. And if this the only truely decent player on the market (and most affordable), then what's the point in even having any other company produce players when they are going to be sub-standard by comparison? It doesn't make much sense to me.
If Blu-Ray does win in the long hall, then I do hope at some point they establish a solid set of standards and just stick to them. They will upset more people than anything if they keep playing these games.
As of right now, if the goal of these technologies was to see which one could do a better job of annoying the hell out of people, then yes, I would say that Blu-Ray would indeed have many, many advantages in that regard.
