Next-gen DVDs: Expensive and confusing

[Steve]

Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD will be expensive to buy, and the fact that there's two competing standards doesn't help either.

By offering discs with far more capacity than current DVDs, the groups hope to breath new life into the $24 billion home video market. But their failure to use a unified format has paved the way for a costly battle similar to the VHS/Betamax video war 25 years ago that caused widespread customer confusion.

[Reuters]

[badass]

I hope they both become an expensive complete flop. The huge cost would hopefully teach all who invested a thing or 2 about screwing consumers over because of piracy paranoia.
Of course I doubt this will happen and one will emerge the winner.

[autopilot]

At least having two means they will compete over price. But there is no way they will take over DVD's for many years, in fact they may be yet another generation of storage format before people will drop DVD en mass. Average Joe has only just got used to DVD.

The difference between VHS and Betamax, which is an analogy i don't buy, is that customers had to make a chioce. You could not buy a device that played both. While producing HD dual drives is more expensive than dual DVD+/- drives because you need two lasers, they will make them and it will be more transparent to the average consumer.

[steve threlfall]

And it was years before DVD became anything like mainstream. At first, the selection of films available on dvd was abysmal and the prices as high as hd dvd and blue ray are going to launch at.

I'l definately not be buying into either until its clear which format is the winner. I love the fact that i only have to wait a month or so after a films release to pick it up for about £8- its going to take something very very special to convince me to hand over more than £15 for a film...

I think il get a player that upscales dvd's to hd in the mean time...

[5lab]

And it was years before DVD became anything like mainstream. At first, the selection of films available on dvd was abysmal and the prices as high as hd dvd and blue ray are going to launch at.

hmm not convinced - i'd say it took under 2 years..

I think il get a player that upscales dvd's to hd in the mean time...

you'd probably be better off just letting your telly do it - unless you've got one which'll do 1280x720 exactly, you'd end up rescaling the source material twice..

[S_D]

Hiya,

I think the main problem here is that industry is trying to drive the market along, rather than let the consumers (ie, the market!) drive the market along. As has been correctly pointed out lots of people have only just got used to DVD, so why would they want to go to another shiny silver disc when they probably won't be able to appreciate any major difference in what it offers them.

Simon.

[Stoo]

hmm not convinced - i'd say it took under 2 years..

Nope, from the launch of the dvd, to popularity, was a whole bunch longer than that.

you'd probably be better off just letting your telly do it - unless you've got one which'll do 1280x720 exactly, you'd end up rescaling the source material twice..

That depends on the quality of the dvd player, something like a Denon 1920 produces a *much* better picture than a *good* 576p player due to the quality of the scaler chip it uses.

[villarule]

There will be alot of confusion in the general market I think.Films and things may be relased on only one format, different adverts for other formats, players and recorders playing a single format. The average person will be really confused and not know which to go with, so they are likely to stick with their DVD recorder which does the job fine.

It will be expensive at first, everything generally is at launch. Back in the days when CD-RW drives were £80+, blank CDs were around a tenner for 5, DVD players being a huge luxery, all things come down as demand becomes bigger and production becomes more widespread. ATM, blank Dual layer DVDs are still slightly too expensive for what they are, but they will come down in price in the next few months I reckon.

[Stoo]

When CDRW drives first arrived they are actually up at £300+, with CDRW media being stupidly expensive, but look at how cheap those are these days..

[Mike Fishcake]

I hope they both become an expensive complete flop. The huge cost would hopefully teach all who invested a thing or 2 about screwing consumers over because of piracy paranoia.

I would laugh and laugh and laugh myself sick if that happened

You could get Apple involved and call it a PodDisc and then all the tech style freaks will clamber over it

[Main]

He said some high-definition TV sets may be incompatible with copy protection on the HD DVD and Blu-ray players.

Wonderful. Like the HDMI business with graphics cards we may not have TV's which are guaranteed to actually display the content. Regardless of cost the new format changes seem to be going about in the messiest way possible, with a mindset that the consumer will be happy to pick up the cost (or just ignoring the consumer completely).

The first DVD player in our house was a DVD drive in a 1999 Advent computer(but it never worked until software improved), but the player in the lounge is I think from 2002. We got the player when my parents finally decided we needed a DVD player for the TV, and that was at a time when DVDs went for around £20 each. It's a DVD/VHS combo player too...

No we didn't have a PS2 though, we had a Dreamcast

So from the first players in Europe to a player in our house was about 4 years. Considering that to get the most out of the new formats you're going to need to shell out on a new TV and sound system too I think the uptake could be slower, unless prices drop faster.

[MakaveliThaDon]

Well, it is yet another case of two big companies selling a whole lot of hype to the film industry. HD-DVD will be cheaper to produce and have less problems, and Blu-Ray will be able to hold more content.
Now, hold more content? Thats seems to me like a stupid arguement for Blu-ray as who needs more content than what a 2 disc DVD set can hold anyway? There are hundreds of hours of pointless footage on most DVD movies anyway that most of us dont watch anyway.

I say if there is going to be a shift in technology !AGAIN!, please leave it to one format, and one format only. It seems that the Microsoft / Sony console media war has spilled over into the street, and everyone is going to get pulled into it!!!!

Maka

[5lab]

you're not going to *have* to buy a new telly or new sound setup, but to get the best from the disks you will. the same goes for dvd really - you can see/hear the difference much more clearly on an expensive setup than you can on a 14" argos job..

i think all 'hd ready' sets WILL be compatible with the players - however some hi-def sets dont have hdmi on them, as a result of which they might not fully support the capabilities of blue-ray/hd-dvd..

personally, i think the move to hdmi is a good one - a crappy scart cable knocks back all but the cheapest of setups, however most consumers wont think to upgrade. sure, there are differences in the capabilities of an hdmi cable as well (a higher quality one will loose less data in noise) - however the difference in digital transmission is much less noticable..

i dont personally see why everyone is obsessed with hating the copy-protection stuff. it simply wont hurt the average consumer who has a player hooked up to a tv.. only people trying to do 'smart' stuff with it will find it harder..

Well, it is yet another case of two big companies selling a whole lot of hype to the film industry. HD-DVD will be cheaper to produce and have less problems, and Blu-Ray will be able to hold more content.
Now, hold more content? Thats seems to me like a stupid arguement for Blu-ray as who needs more content than what a 2 disc DVD set can hold anyway? There are hundreds of hours of pointless footage on most DVD movies anyway that most of us dont watch anyway.

more capacity does not necessarily mean more content. the bitrate of some dvds is pretty shocking, which results in artifacting. having the capability for this not to worry on hd would be nice - as for blue-ray having 'more problems' - where do you get that from?

[Rave]

sure, there are differences in the capabilities of an hdmi cable as well (a higher quality one will loose less data in noise)

Yeah, but unless you've got visible pixel dropouts on your screen there is no point at all in buying a higher quality cable. DVI/HDMI pretty much either work perfectly or work very noticeably badly. Unless you're doing long cable runs any old cheapo cable is very likely to give perfect transmission. More here:

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articl...icomponent.htm

....who interestingly seem to be that rarest of creatures- an honest cable manufacturer.

[mmmalas]

I dont think anyone would need such high res, unless he have massive tv,

on my 19" monitor/tv 480p looks great

[5lab]

on my 26" display the difference between hd and sh it noticble, but not essential. other things make a differrence too.. my 36" sd set is better quality overall than my 26"hd set.