Hasta la Vista, HD-DVD...

[veeten]

With Warner Bros., through their subsidiary Warner Home Video, choosing to end their relationship with Toshiba/Microsoft and Go with the 'Sony Consortium' and Blu-Ray, HD-DVD has now only Paramount and Vivendi-Universal as those producing and reproducing content for its format.

[veeten]

oh look, there's a knife sticking out of Toshiba's back... and it has a Windows logo on the handle. :p :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7208767

[Hawkmoon]

Actually the knife has a Paramount logo on the other side. Paramount are about to jump ship to Blu-Ray exclusive leaving Universal all alone as a major player on the HD-DVD side.

Toshiba just had their Waterloo. The war is over.

[veeten]

if it wasn't official then, it looks like it now.

Wal-Mart has decided that they will stop selling HD-DVD discs and players by June of this year.

Toshiba, the manufacturer working with Microsoft on HD-DVD technology, is rumored to end their part of the deal and stop making them.

the winner, by popular demand, Blu-Ray.

[pino]

if i

...the winner, by popular demand, Blu-Ray.

One more reason to buy the PS3 then :p :

[Mark]

Sony has won a format war! At last :p .
How many have they lost? ;)

[A.F.F.]

All hail to Sony.

I wonder if those blueray discs work in my beta box. I wouldn't mind finally using it to something :p :

[Daniel]

Thank god someone won. I wanted to it be HD-DVD because it's not Sony and it's region free but oh well....

Pity it didn't go on longer though. If Toshiba had more market share it would have forced Sony to cut retail costs. Sony is now going to profiteer nicely from this :mark: Well I might get a bluray player in 5 years time when the prices are more reasonable.

[DonJippo]

One more reason to buy the PS3 then :p :

Thank's for the info :up: ;)

[tmx]

Neither matters to me, except for the H264 encoding technology. HDDVD and Blu-ray uses the same three video encoding formats, Microsoft's VC1, MPEG & VCEG's H264 and MPEG2. You don't lose much as a consumer with one going, except that it's all about DRM.

Once blu-ray is more afforable and there are cheap bd-rom bd-r for storage purpose then i'll buy it. 25gb per layer. I don't know why they still use the same size as standard cd and not make it smaller.

Currently I there are only 2.5 good hidef movies to watch, LOTR and Band of Brothers, also Planet Earth if you like seeing when animal attacks. Tell me when they make another original film as good as the Godfather and in hidef, I will then go to the store and buy a blu-ray player along with a 58" 120hz Samsung LED, or SED, but that's a big if.

[Dave B]

Sony has won a format war! At last :p .
How many have they lost? ;)
I suppose technically Minidisc won out over Philips' DCC, but it was rather a phyrric victory :p

[Daniel]

It's 100% official now :)
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080219005651&newsLang=en

DonJippo. You can still buy the 360 and get a Bluray add-on in future I'm sure ;)

http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Calm+About+HD+DVD+Defeat/article10749.htm

[veeten]

the rats are deserting the ship... :p :

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9874320-7.html?tag=nefd.lede

[Mark]

I suppose technically Minidisc won out over Philips' DCC, but it was rather a phyrric victory :p

Yes I was just thinking about that one.
They lost Sony Betamax vs JVC VHS, I think that one was mostly because JVC was first to market and was cheaper, in a time when TV's sucked so quality issues weren't noticeable.

Sony MiniDisc did beat Philips DCC, but much like recent world events they won the war but sqandered the peace! Mini Disc recorders were far too expensive (£200+ which is a lot even now), compared to the casette tapes they replaced, and the same as casettes you could only record to them in real time. If they had their brains in gear they would have brought out a version you could connect to a PC from the start, but by the time they did Apple had already released the iPod: game over.

The HD-DVD vs Blueray battle is kind of the reverse of VHS vs Betamax, once again Sony came out with the slightly better but more expsensive model, and again were second in the marketplace, but this time managed to pull off a victory. Perhaps it was the extra storage space on Blueray discs, or just that Blueray sounds much more interesting than HD-DVD :p

[Dave B]

I think this time round Sony's major coup was fitting Bluray in the PS3 and thereby putting HiDef DVD in a million teenage bedrooms. Purists and geeks may care about the technical nuances of Bluray vs HD-DVD, but most consumers won't be able to tell the difference - or care. Many of them will have bought a £40 upscaling player from the supermarket, and still believe they've got HD!

Whether it ultimately goes on to be as successful as VHS or DVD as a mass storage medium depends a lot on whether film distribution emulates music by shifting almost entirely online.

Obviously a movie or even a TV programmes makes for a far bigger file than an MP3, but as internet access gets faster and storage gets cheaper we may well see the demise of all physical formats within a decade or so.

[Mark]

Totally, I believe this is the final format war, as content will be delievered online. But for now I believe blue-ray has got a good 10 years of life ahead of it as HD content delivery platforms just aren't up to the job right now.

You've got plenty of on-demand services of SD content such as Sky BoxOfficer and Virgin Movies on Demand but DVD sales are still going strong, so it's got a long way to go. Plus the fact that there isn't currently the model for keeping a downloaded film (not legally anyway) and the ones you can download are way move expensive than DVD rental.

Every time I've thought to myself "I would quite like to see that film" and looked for it on 'OnDemand' it hasn't been there :s

[janneppi]

You need a pretty fast network connection for it to be commercially viable way to trasfer movies
Let's say someone has a 100Mb/s connection to a DC hub type thingy, a trasfer of a 700Mb Linux distro would take less than a minute, that would make trasfer times of larger files such as HD movies acceptable.

On the other hand that same person might only have a 2Mb line and transfers the same Linux distro which would take well over two hours, that would be unacceptable for that hypothetical person. :)

If the transfer times are far greater than it takes to visit your local video rental, it doesn't interest the masses.

[Mark]

Well the technology is already in place in some areas, I'm on Virgin Cable and I can watch programmes and film in HD 'OnDemand' basically streamed live over the network, there is no dowload delay.

(At least I could if I had an HD TV!)

[ioan]

the winner, by popular demand, Blu-Ray.

Popular demand? You must be kidding!

[Daniel]

Well the technology is already in place in some areas, I'm on Virgin Cable and I can watch programmes and film in HD 'OnDemand' basically streamed live over the network, there is no dowload delay.

(At least I could if I had an HD TV!)

That's not "proper" HD though. It might be @ a 1080p resolution but it's compressed to about the size of a DVD. I guess for a lot of people for whom a Dave said an upscaler is as good as high def this will be just as good.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=959 :)

[Mark]

That's not "proper" HD though. It might be @ a 1080p resolution but it's compressed to about the size of a DVD. I guess for a lot of people for whom a Dave said an upscaler is as good as high def this will be just as good.

How do you know?

[Daniel]

Click ze link!

[Dave B]

On a tangent, there's a good chance of a three-way format war in UK radio broadcasting anytime soon: DAB vs DAB+ vs Wi-Fi. Now that will get consumers hot under the collar, with 6.5 million DAB sets at risk of obsolescence!

[PuddleJumper]

Obviously a movie or even a TV programmes makes for a far bigger file than an MP3, but as internet access gets faster and storage gets cheaper we may well see the demise of all physical formats within a decade or so.
I hope so!

[Daniel]

Obviously a movie or even a TV programmes makes for a far bigger file than an MP3, but as internet access gets faster and storage gets cheaper we may well see the demise of all physical formats within a decade or so.

Ooh I missed that.

I hope so too. Tbh I don't care for physically having something in my hand. As long as the quality is the same it doesn't bother me. Though I do think lots of people will have issues with that. Some people just won't quite "get" it. I've bought games off Steam and downloaded them just fine and get by without discs and so on but a lot of people are still stuck with the "I paid money for it and I want something in my hand" mentality of last century. I do hope proper uncompressed HD downloads do win out soon though :)

[Daniel]

On a tangent, there's a good chance of a three-way format war in UK radio broadcasting anytime soon: DAB vs DAB+ vs Wi-Fi. Now that will get consumers hot under the collar, with 6.5 million DAB sets at risk of obsolescence!
Oooh. We were going to buy a DAB radio around Christmas time. Might not do that now :p

[Sleeper]

Ooh I missed that.

I hope so too. Tbh I don't care for physically having something in my hand. As long as the quality is the same it doesn't bother me. Though I do think lots of people will have issues with that. Some people just won't quite "get" it. I've bought games off Steam and downloaded them just fine and get by without discs and so on but a lot of people are still stuck with the "I paid money for it and I want something in my hand" mentality of last century. I do hope proper uncompressed HD downloads do win out soon though :)
When it comes to games and movies I couldnt care about having the discs in my hand, but TV series would end up taking up a lot of memory so I'm not sure how practical that is. As for music, I most certainly prefer having a CD over an mp3 file, mainly because mp3 sound quality is considerably lower than CD's, and that makes a considerable difference to me. I'd miss the artwork too.

[Daniel]

When it comes to games and movies I couldnt care about having the discs in my hand, but TV series would end up taking up a lot of memory so I'm not sure how practical that is. As for music, I most certainly prefer having a CD over an mp3 file, mainly because mp3 sound quality is considerably lower than CD's, and that makes a considerable difference to me. I'd miss the artwork too.
Well considering you can get a 500gb HDD for about 60 quid and that can hold 17 or so HD-DVD's worth of stuff it's not going to be a huge cost to add hard drives to your PC to store this stuff :)

I think when high def downloads do take off then Windows Home Servers are going to become very popular :)

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(31152)HP-MediaSmart-Home-Server-EX470-AMD-18GHz.aspx

Buy something like that an load it up with a few terrabytes worth of hard drive and your storage needs are taken care of. Simply then stream that to your home theatre PC and you're sorted :) When I build my next PC this one is going to be turned into a Windows Home Server and will keep backups of all of our data and so on as well as well as storing movie downloads when the day comes where they are worth it :)

I'm beginning to think that perhaps Microsoft did have selfish ideas at heart when it sided with HD-DVD yet didn't go the whole hog and put HD-DVD drives in it's machines. Once Bluray reaches the level at which DVD is at now it's going to be very difficult for Microsoft to muscle in with downloads when they don't give any increase in quality or any other appreciable advantage for the user. So why not prolong the war and reduce the adoption rate overall and make it easier for downloads to break into the market? If downloads become popular then you can bet that in addition the high def download boxes that will spring up there will be a lot of people who will use PC's to play their content and Microsoft will make money out of that :)

[Dave B]

I think when high def downloads do take off then Windows Home Servers are going to become very popular :)
I want one! I've got six hard drives on my home network - some in PCs, some external. It's a pain, and with none of them RAIDed there's no automatic backup beyond what Vista does for me.

I've got my entire music collection on one (that was a fun week, ripping that lot!) and would quite happily shove all my DVDs onto a server and do away with the physical copies.

I don't know why, but I'm paranoid about a hard drive crashing and losing the lot - even though there's probably just as much chance as losing the discs themselves in a disaster or burglary.

[veeten]

Daniel, I was one of those that did beta testing for WHS, and yes it's the business! :D :up:

Uses a 'soft RAID', so to speak but it doesn't lose any data when removing a HDD from the case when you have multiple ones installed.

Others have given it a test run, both in HP and Scratchbuilds, and it holds up beautifully.

[veeten]

News Flash! Sony throws Toshiba a bone... :p :

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2265350,00.asp

Good Toshiba, good doggy... :dog:

:laugh:

[Daniel]

Daniel, I was one of those that did beta testing for WHS, and yes it's the business! :D :up:

Uses a 'soft RAID', so to speak but it doesn't lose any data when removing a HDD from the case when you have multiple ones installed.

Others have given it a test run, both in HP and Scratchbuilds, and it holds up beautifully.

You can buy a 120 day trial for about £5 if you want to try Dave :)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/eval.mspx

Thanks for the endorsement. I don't actually know anyone whose actually used one so that does mean something. I did like the review on Paul Thurrot's site below though. Seemed to give a good idea of what was good and what was bad with it.

Review of WHS
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs.asp

Here's a review of the HP WHS :)
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs_hp.asp

Microsoft are bringing out WHS Power Pack 1 soon which will bring support for 64 bit operating systems which was the one big problem with WHS.

What were your favourite/least favourite features? Did it have any glaring issues? How useable was it and so on :)

[veeten]

if you have worked with Server 2003, then WHS is a breeze. But even if you haven't, it's easy enough. :)

For install, use the Keyboard/Mouse/Monitor from your regular PC, as you will only need it once. Then reconnect them to your regular PC. You'll never have to touch the server again. :)

You can make it available using wireless, but the issues during the betas were a pain. :s Best advice; wire it to the router.

Best things I like are the automatic backup and remote access, especially the latter. I needed a document for one of my classes at school and it saved me my grade. For college & Uni students, it's a godsend. :)

[Daniel]

if you have worked with Server 2003, then WHS is a breeze. But even if you haven't, it's easy enough.

For install, use the Keyboard/Mouse/Monitor from your regular PC, as you will only need it once. Then reconnect them to your regular PC. You'll never have to touch the server again.

You can make it available using wireless, but the issues during the betas were a pain. :s Best advice; wire it to the router.

Best things I like are the automatic backup and remote access, especially the latter. I needed a document for one of my classes at school and it saved me my grade. For college & Uni students, it's a godsend. :)

Sounds as easy as everyone makes it out to be :)

I use logmein free to remotely access my PC's. We used a pay version at work but the free version is great.

I'd definitely wire it in. The PC in the loungeroom has wireless and mine's wired and transferring anything to and from that PC is like watching paint dry :dozey: Call me old fashioned but you can stick wireless-n and give me gigabit anyday :)

[Malbec]

Well considering you can get a 500gb HDD for about 60 quid and that can hold 17 or so HD-DVD's worth of stuff it's not going to be a huge cost to add hard drives to your PC to store this stuff :)

I think when high def downloads do take off then Windows Home Servers are going to become very popular :)

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(31152)HP-MediaSmart-Home-Server-EX470-AMD-18GHz.aspx

Buy something like that an load it up with a few terrabytes worth of hard drive and your storage needs are taken care of. Simply then stream that to your home theatre PC and you're sorted :) When I build my next PC this one is going to be turned into a Windows Home Server and will keep backups of all of our data and so on as well as well as storing movie downloads when the day comes where they are worth it :)

I'm beginning to think that perhaps Microsoft did have selfish ideas at heart when it sided with HD-DVD yet didn't go the whole hog and put HD-DVD drives in it's machines. Once Bluray reaches the level at which DVD is at now it's going to be very difficult for Microsoft to muscle in with downloads when they don't give any increase in quality or any other appreciable advantage for the user. So why not prolong the war and reduce the adoption rate overall and make it easier for downloads to break into the market? If downloads become popular then you can bet that in addition the high def download boxes that will spring up there will be a lot of people who will use PC's to play their content and Microsoft will make money out of that :)

I'm not sure how well downloads will do in places like Europe where the majority of internet connections are via copper wire. People will expect the same convenience from downloading as they do from disks, they won't expect to have to decide the night before, download for the next day and then watch the film the evening after. It will take a lot of time and money to upgrade connections to be able to allow widespread fast downloading to be convenient enough.

[Daniel]

I'm not sure how well downloads will do in places like Europe where the majority of internet connections are via copper wire. People will expect the same convenience from downloading as they do from disks, they won't expect to have to decide the night before, download for the next day and then watch the film the evening after. It will take a lot of time and money to upgrade connections to be able to allow widespread fast downloading to be convenient enough.

Yup. I think I said that before in this thread but perhaps I'm thinking of another forum where I was having an argument with someone about this :)

BT is rolling their 21cn (21st century network) out but is conveniently only upgrading the backbone network so the bit of copper that goes from the exchange to your house will still be the same crappy bit of copper that limits your broadband speed. They (govt + BT) need to roll fiber out to everyone sooner rather than later otherwise the UK will be known as "That quaint place where people still have ADSL lines for their internet" and things like downloading PROPER HD movies (not compressed rubbish) will seem like a faroff dream. I play games online and my sometimes 1 or 3 meg connection is adequate for that. But in a day and age where content is meant to be so freely available it's a joke that nothing is in the pipeline other than for people living next door to an exchange.

Call me a nutter but I personally think BT should be renationalised and the internet should be run more as a service for the public like a toll road would be. I think the internet is coming to the end of the stage where it's a luxury and is now at the point where ministers quite rightly say that it's not helping with economic growth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7112373.stm

Innovative solutions like this should be looked at in regards to getting the UK back up there with regards to broadband speeds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7202396.stm

As you can see from this graph ADSL2+ is a joke in this day and age where much higher speeds are possible at much greater distances with fiber. This will be OK for large cities and towns but not all people live in large cities and towns :mark:

http://kb.netcomm.com.au/kb/admin/virtual/imgs/adsl2plus.jpg

Plus there's the fact that ADSL is asymetric so while your download speed may be OK your upload speed is crapola. My upload speed is less than 400k which is crap. The internet is a two way thing :mark:

[Dave B]

places like Europe where the majority of internet connections are via copper wire.
In the UK the average speed is (currently) pathetic :s
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/02/20/average_uk_broadband_speed_is_less_than_3mbps_says _broadband_expert_.html

[Hawkmoon]

In the UK the average speed is (currently) pathetic :s
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/02/20/average_uk_broadband_speed_is_less_than_3mbps_says _broadband_expert_.html

Yeah, well I reckon we in the Land Down Under can raise your "pathetic" with "stunningly pathetic", "shockingly crap" and "what do you mean Afghanistan has faster Internet than us?!". :(

[leopard]

That means probably the faster connection because Afghan has low traffic for the internet. Because the use of telephone and internet are sort of accurate hints for alliance troops finding taliban. :( ;)

[PuddleJumper]

In the UK the average speed is (currently) pathetic :s
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/02/20/average_uk_broadband_speed_is_less_than_3mbps_says _broadband_expert_.html
Huh! I'd be happy with an average connection.

[Daniel]

Huh! I'd be happy with an average connection.
I'm surprised you even have the internet!

This is a local town for local people! We'll have no internets here!!!!!

I'd like an average connection too :p

[Mark]

Not the best example as the only toll road in the UK is run by a private profit making company.

[Daniel]

Not the best example as the only toll road in the UK is run by a private profit making company.

but at the end of the day you pays your money and you doesn't deal with congestion or at least in the dozen or so times I've been on it. At the end of the day I'm paying 20 something pounds and not getting the best connection....

[Mark]

We always pay the most money and get the worst service, they should put that in the constitution!