HD Optical Media War - Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD

[PenguinJim]

Gadget site Gizmodo a couple of days ago discussed how the state of Blu-Ray is a lot worse than most people have imagined. From State of Blu-ray: Not So Good?:

Among the observations culled together from separate news stories and "insider intelligence":

• The manufacturing yield rates on BD50 (the 50GB discs) are only 40% from Sony manufacturers and down to 10% yields on non-Sony manufacturers. That means only one in 10 discs made by a non-Sony plant works as a BD50 disc. This in turn leads to higher costs.

• BD1.1 player spec is hard to develop for, leading the only BD1.1 player to be delayed until Q2 2008.

• BD-J, the language they use for special features on discs, is horrible to program for, as we saw already.

• PS3 sales are only 1/4 as much as the 6 million target.

• At least one studio unhappy with Blu-ray.

Over at CampaignHD (the original source), there is a lot more detail.

(6) Due to what appears to be ill-thought out strategies on copy-protection, new Bluray players coming out are said to have been forced (apparently by Sony) to limit playback of BD-R/RE recordable discs, or of BDMV content from BD-R/RE discs. According to one Sony insider, the BD players were "never supposed to" be able to play these BDMV BD-R discs anyway, and that there was only a grace period (which has now expired) during which this was allowed, to help studios test. One insider happily defended his case by stating that Bluray players are not required to playback BD-R/RE discs anyway!

In my opinion, it is looking incredibly bad for the Bluray format right now, and if another major studio doesn't shift towards HD DVD in the next 3 months, it'll either be due to an absolute miracle, or to an absolutely enourmous amount of money.

When the two formats launched last year, I was very critical of the seeming "unready" status of Bluray technology and felt that some of these issues would be a problem - but we never expected to see signs that it was still this bad over A YEAR after the Bluray format launched in June 2006.

In an entirely separate article, from almost a week ago, analyst Rob Enderle (the guy who convinced Time Warner to go for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD instead of just HD-DVD last year) has declared the Blu-Ray format dead.

I was one of the folks who thought that Blu-ray was going to eliminate HD-DVD and by this time HD-DVD would be toast. In fact, I was one of the analysts who helped convince Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) to hedge its bets and go with both formats.

However, this was all before I knew the cost of the Blu-ray technology, and it was based on the assumption that Sony (NYSE: SNE) Latest News about Sony would never be stupid enough to price itself out of the game console market, effectively giving it to Nintendo and Microsoft.

Given my history with Sony, you'd think I'd know better and would have assumed it would be that stupid. That likely would have resulted in a lot less pain all around.

Not only was Blu-ray too expensive, the technology wasn't as far along as Sony led us to believe. The delays not only make the PS3 too expensive; they made it late. That was effectively a one-two punch, knocking Sony out of the lead so far in the game console business. Now, Sony is dead last by a significant margin.

This means that developers, instead of favoring Sony with their best stuff, are now concentrating on the Xbox first, and increasingly the Wii Latest News about Wii. That's because both have more homes, and thus represent a greater revenue opportunity, than Sony does.

So instead of the PS3 ensuring Blu-ray's success, right now it appears that Blu-ray may have effectively killed the PS3, at least in terms of market leadership. We'll have to wait until the PS4 before Sony has a chance to come back.

I hadn't realised things were this bad for Blu-Ray, but I guess it's behind the scenes where the important stuff happens. It'll be interesting to see if HD-DVD also loses.

R.I.P. Blu-Ray.

[shadowmaster]

I dont think this war had ended just yet. If Blu ray is in such a dire state as you say, then I dont think blockbuster and more recently acer would give their support to blu ray.

I personally dont care who wins but I think its way too early to say this format war has ended.

[PenguinJim]

I agree. I just posted this as it seemed an interesting foil to the blinkered Sony propaganda that has been rearing its ugly head around these forums over the last few months.

[Funkstar]

I wouldn't go as far as declaring Bluray dead, but some interesting points.

I haven't heard about the poor yields from the pressing plants before. That's pretty bad.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

LOL where is that thread here saying hd dvd is losing ?

[spazman]

Wow i can see this thread turning stupid pretty quickly, wait for the fan-boys.

[Saracen]

I still remember quite clearly the VHS/Betamax (and Video 2000) fight, and personally, I'm not investing a red cent in either HD or Bluray until this one's sorted. I was lucky last time - I picked VHS mainly because of the support from video rental stores, but a lot of people put a lot of money into an economic dead-end, even if a technologically superior format.

Not me, not this time. I'm not buying so much as a single disc, let alone hardware, until the dust settles on this one. And personally, I don't much care who wins, providing someone does. Until then, my money stays in the bank.

[Funkstar]

Same here.

But also i'm not prepaired to pay the current price for HD disks. once you can pick them up in 3 for £25 or for about £10 each then i'll jump in

[TooNice]

HD has the cheaper hardware, and the media is supposed to be cheaper to manufacture. But if that is the case, then they sure aren't passing the cost saving down to the consumers. Last time I checked, the cost of BD-R comes up cheaper per GB than HD DVD-R. So either media manufacturers are accepting a much lower margin with BD-R, but I see no reason why they'd want to do that. Normally, you pay a premium per GB for the convenience of higher storage in the upper end: the 1TB HD will cost more than the 750GB per GB, DVD-9 cost more than DVD-5 per GB. So if BD media are so much harder to manufacture, then it is all the more reason, in my opinion, to see higher cost in BD media.

I am also withholding buying either format right now. But looking from the perspective of future of optical storage, I am more in favour of BD. The difference here is a little more significant than +R/-R. That's unless HD DVD-R drops in price significantly to reflect it's lower manufacturing costs. In my opinion though, neither format will bite the dust..

[Saracen]

From the optical storage point of view, I'm still using DVD-RAM. Been using it for years, and it does what I need in terms of data archive. I don't need vast amounts of capacity, or particularly high speeds ...... and a DVD burner including DVD-RAM can be had for well-under £20 (which makes me wince at what I paid when it came out years ago).

[TheAnimus]

DVD-RAM is rather good, before i switched mostly to HDD now, i used to use the old PD


I never understood why those didn't take off!

I find the bluray vrs HD fight interesting, because at present I can't really bring myself to buy them. The disc price is stupidly high (£12 for piss poor films £20 for latest release).

I currently have about 3 HD and 4 bluray. I doubt i'll be buying many more, whilst the quality is so much better, the same film on DVD is often £5. I'll spend the £15 on some nice wine, and not tell the difference thanks.

Rather than one winning or losing, at the moment, they are both loosing, compared to dvd.

Often the film (like Hot Fuzz) is out on DVD before its out on HD. When DVD was launched you got it months before the VHS people did, at higher quality. Those two factors justified the price.

[TooNice]

It's true that neither BD-R nor HD DVD-R are ready for optical storage (at least for the price conscious). But the same way that most of us moved away from CD-RW/PD (yea, I remember those - admittedly I didn't pay them much attention though), I am sure that we will in time shift to one of the HD format.

[Andy3536]

I don't know about other countries but certainly here in the UK, i know no one with any form of HD player.
It's just not happening at all for either, it's gonna take one hell of a shift if there not just going to be fad.

It's not the case that one is winning over the other, they are both loosing in a big way, it's just one's loosing worse than the other.
The simple fact is no one watches a dvd and complains about the quality, so why pay twice as much for somthing that won't be realesed at the same time as the dvd anyway?

[Saracen]

DVD-RAM is rather good, before i switched mostly to HDD now, i used to use the old PD


I never understood why those didn't take off!

Yup. Used to use PD too, though I used Plasmon drives. And standard MO (as well as phase change), in the 3.5" form factor. Still got them, too.

Not to mention Zip and Jaz, and DDR 1, 2 and 3, and Tandberg SLR tape, and ..... ad nauseum.

Somewhere, I've still got the old 150MB streamer (and tapes) I used to use when a 286 was state of the art ..... and expensive enough to have bought about 5 current state of the art systems.

[bigblue]

The simple fact is no one watches a dvd and complains about the quality, so why pay twice as much for somthing that won't be realesed at the same time as the dvd anyway?

I do ! But then I am a moany beggar

There are now a lot of people who realise that DVD picture quality isn't good enough. If you watch one on a FullHD screen, even with decent upscaling somewhere in the chain, the end result is fairly poor.

With SkyHD now piping better than DVD quality images into peoples homes, who's going to buy a DVD when you can watch something as part of your Sky subscription in far better quality ? I know I haven't.

There is a need for HD discs of some sort until Broadband speeds are greatly improved. I just hope that this isn't such a big cock-up that we lose both formats. I don't think anyone has lost the format war yet though, as yields and manufacturing processes, and therefore profits, will no doubt improve. It's early yet !

[TooNice]

Not to mention Zip and Jaz, and DDR 1, 2 and 3, and Tandberg SLR tape, and ..... ad nauseum.

I went for the SparQ drive

It seemed a good idea at the time (cheaper drive and per GB than the Jaz) and it got good reviews on release. To be honest, I didn't encounter problems other did, but it seems like they mocked up big time.

The simple fact is no one watches a dvd and complains about the quality, so why pay twice as much for somthing that won't be realesed at the same time as the dvd anyway?

I kinda fear for the future of HD whenever I read something like that. It sure isn't the first time, and as DVD-A and SACD has shown, the possibility that two next gen format fail to establish as the new standard is quite possible. Personally, I find HD Video a welcome upgrade to DVD, but considering that DVD has not even managed to phase out VCD in Asia, I do not completely doubt that a lot of people simply don't care. Even though we are seeing ever larger LCD/Plasma TVs

Maybe we need to move onto life-realistic holographic format to impress future users