What will be DVD's successor?

I heard that Blue Ray discs might be more sensitive to scratches because the tolerances and the protective layer are too small. But on the other hand it has the advantage of higher capacity. It probalby also depends how open Sony will be with this standard. Betamax did not win the cassette battle, because Sony was the only manufacturer, and look at MD players, they only play a small role too. Let’s hope they learned from their mistakes.

I’m sure there were many reasons why Beta failed, licensing probably being a big one. But I don’t think production licensing is a problem this time.

Blue-Ray ='s 40% more pr0n. :smiley: :laughing:

I realize DivX is just software. But as a video codec it permits one to cram a feature length HD movie onto a single disc. Therefore, doesn’t it essentially serve the same purpose as the blue laser technologies? There are DVD players out there with DivX built in. Do they accomplish the same thing as an HD DVD or Blue Ray player?

I see from some of the posts that’s there’s a little confusion between DivX and Divx. I’m not expert (in fact, I still watch VCDs), but anyway, a couple of enlightening links:

oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1324

divx.com/divx/whatisdivx.php

cheers,
Robert

I’m less of an expert than you Robert, but it’s my understanding that the DivX that exists today is a video codec sometimes written as DivX ;-), as a mocking reference to the fact that it first earned its reputation for movie piracy (but is now trying to earn a legit rep) and was named after the now defunct Divx, which was a greedy effort to sell movies that are only viewable for a very short time (in order to deter piracy and increase profits).

Thanks for the links. I’ll check them out when I have time.

But my prior question remains. If blue laser makes HDDVD possible through lots of storage on a disc, then doesn’t a video codec such as DivX basically accomplish the same thing by eliminating the need for lots of storage?

Blue Ray is just another technology to put more data on CD sized medium. To make HDDVD’s possible, the industry is doing two things, improving the software and improving the hardware. HD content on a regular DVD might be possible, but is still a compromise, especially if you want multiple soundtracks, extra content, 1080i etc. Just recently the movie “Gangs of New York” was released on a single DVD in HD quality. As a codec they used Windows Media, but DivX, or h.264 should perform similar. This has truely shown that due to this compromise the quality suffers and that a higher capacity medium is necessary, or you end up being the DJ as I remember from old i386 times when I had to install Windows 3.11 or WinWord 2.0 coming on 12 or more floppies.

That would depend on the efficiency of the codec. If such a codec could compress down to the amount of data that can be held on a DVD (and maintain the same quality as MPEG-2) than this would be an alternative.
Given that HDTV contains a lot more information you would need a really powerful codec to squezze it onto a normal DVD.

Also note that new sound formats are in the making (e.g. Dolby Digital Plus), thus increasing the need for more storage space, so a new type of DVD is probably required anyhow.

In my opinion, just doing HD DivX on DVD is not sufficient for good quality HD. It’s too much of a compromise to get that much material compressed that tightly. The top resolution of HD has about 6 times the resolution of what standard definition on DVD. DivX can do up to 2X compression over MPEG-2 without a significant change in quality. It can do much higher compression rates and still look decent, and the increase in resolution with HD is such that artifacts will be less apparent, but it won’t be able to do 6X the compression that is required to fit full movies on DVD without compromising quality. On the other hand, DivX at 720i/p is probably adequate to do full length movies on DVD without too much compromise.

The type of people that adopt new technologies are very picky, and tend to shy away from technology with too many compromises. There are a few technologies that have been shunned by the power users but adopted by the mass market, but not a lot. I don’t think that DivX on DVD is going to be adopted by this group.

Besides that, DivX on DVD is already here. There’s DVD players from e.g. Lite-On and Philips that play DivX files off DVDs already. But the market for those is almost entirely people who download video off the internet. There’s a smaller group that records their own DivX files off TV and burns them to DVD that comprises the remainder of the group.

Another reason Hollywood won’t adopt DivX on DVD is because of a lack of copy protection standards. If you talk to the executives instead of the technical folks, this is probably their number 1 concern. More than anything else, they want to prevent pirates from copying their stuff. Personally, I don’t think they will ever come up with copy protection that prevents piracy, but they certainly won’t adopt any format that doesn’t have some amount of copy protection. DivX on DVD also doesn’t support menus and chapter marks, so you can basically just switch between files.

So basically the ingredients in the mix for creating a video disk standard are: 1) the physical media standard itself 2) the video formats supported 3) the audio formats supported 4) how the streams are organized on the media and 5) the copy protection. For the new standards, 1) is down to two choices, 2) is pretty set at three choices, 3) is pretty much set, 4) is still being tweaked but mostly set and 5) is still up in the air. And the video formats do include H.264 MPEG-4. This is not DivX, but close enough. And it turns out that other than the physical media itself, the work on the remaining four items is pretty much the same, so it is quite possible that the format that is recorded on the disk will be the same between HD-DVD and BluRay and it’ll just be a battle over the physical media.

Some other responses to recent remarks…

“DivX ;-)” is from the original 3.x codec which was stolen from Microsoft and released on the net for free. That was called “DivX ;-)” and was the first video codec with the right mix of compression and quality to do make full frame video feasible on PCs. What we know of today as DivX is a complete reimplementation of the source code and eventually put out as DivX 4.x. Only the original uses the “DivX ;-)” string.

As for the fragility of HD-DVD and BluRay because of the denser recording, they also have increased the amount of error correction on these formats. It remains to be seen if it is enough, but I’m sure they took this into account, just as they took it into account when producing the DVD standard with stronger error correction than CD.

Sony has hopefully learned their lesson about trying to go it alone on format issues. Another slipup not mentioned was their stubborn insistence on uses ATRAC format instead of MP3 for the music players until recently.

And I don’t doubt that only 10% of consumers say they want an HD disk standard, and the complaints that current players are too expensive. A lot of the same stuff was said about DVD as well, and when the finalized players came to market they started at USD1000 too. While there are players out now for BluRay and HD-DVD, they aren’t standardized products , so it is too early to make price comparisons. For DVD, the format didn’t start taking off until players went below USD500, and really took off when they hit USD200. Now they are one of the cheapest electronics components you can buy. One of the HD standards will likely follow a similiar path.

That would depend on the efficiency of the codec. If such a codec could compress down to the amount of data that can be held on a DVD (and maintain the same quality as MPEG-2) than this would be an alternative.
Given that HDTV contains a lot more information you would need a really powerful codec to squezze it onto a normal DVD.[/quote]
And I don’t think a codec could satisfy the need for the all important multiple angle porno shots (I always wondered what that multiple angle button was for :laughing:)

Microsoft goes with HD DVD for a few logical reasons

arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ … hd-dvd.ars

Will they get movie studios to change horses??

[quote=“llama_lout”]Microsoft goes with HD DVD for a few logical reasons

arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ … hd-dvd.ars

Will they get movie studios to change horses??[/quote]

Wasn’t this already expected? Just a confirmation since they already announced previously that the XBox360 will have HD-DVD, eventually.

For a while it seemed HD-DVD was going to win, now it’s not so certain.

Rumours are the region encoding for Blu-Ray actually seems to be less strict than on DVDs, and Taiwan is in the same region as North America:

Region 1: North America, South America, and East Asia (excluding China)
Region 2: Europe (including Turkey), and Africa
Region 3: China, Russia and others

arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051228-5857.html

the price of the players and the media is also to take into consideration. blu-ray will be very very expensive in the first year or two. im not sure but i guess it will be pretty difficult to see differences in quality between the two. that’s a format issue actually…
as for blu-ray on ps3, it’s useless for games atm and will make prices go up. the ps3 might end up being the most successful hd player though. both the xbox360 and the ps3 will play a huge role in the hd war…
interesting stuff:
news.com.com/Gamers+could+influe … 23817.html

Considering that nothing but pure ego is driving this new format war I hope neither one wins. It is absolutely absurd that Sony and Toshiba could not resolve their differences over what is essentially just a bigger DVD. They do not deserve customers. Instead, I hope some dark horse technology comes along and makes both of them irrelevant, kinda like what mp3’s did to MiniDisc. If broadband in the US gets fast enough, maybe online movies will finally become feasible.

The only practical reason I can see for Sony to stick to Blu-Ray is that it has already committed to providing Blu-Ray capability in the PS3, to change the spec would be to delay the system’s launch. That would be suicide with the 360 already on shelves. Yet Sony still seems to think this is a hardware game; I see none of the “digital lifestyle” vision that we see from Microsoft with Xbox Live or from Apple with iTunes. The days when whizz-bang technology was enough to be successful are long over, if there ever was such a time.

They’ve dicked around with BluRay for so long that now the answer is, for many applications:

A Hard Disk.

And for smaller applications:

Flash memory.

Still, I guess they have to finally release BluRay with the PlayStation 3.

[quote=“Toe Tag”]They’ve dicked around with BluRay for so long that now the answer is, for many applications:

A Hard Disk.

And for smaller applications:

Flash memory.

Still, I guess they have to finally release BluRay with the PlayStation 3.[/quote]

The only problem with a harddisk is, that they tend to break, and your data is gone. Don’t want to buy a HD movie, download it onto the HDD, and after a year, the head crashes, and everything disappears. For temporary storage yeah, a HDD is better, for longterm storage and ease of use, I’d go for optical media. I don’t think there is competition between them at all.

Here’s something to add to the fire. I always thought data on optical disks lasted for longer than a few years.

news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2006011 … rld/124312

[quote=“MotorcycleRider”]Here’s something to add to the fire. I always thought data on optical disks lasted for longer than a few years.

news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2006011 … rld/124312[/quote]

Yeah, that is true, burned optical discs aren’t that great for long term storage. I was thinking more about pressed optical disc, such as DVD movies, if you handle them with care, they should outlast your player.

For longterm storage I always recommend a tape backup.

Time to revive this old thread… :smiley:

BR (bluray) is taking a big slap on the face. Picture quality on HD-DVD (ms’ VC-1 encoder) is said to be way better than on BD (mpeg2). Cheap HD-DVD players sold out… Toshiba’s player tops the list of DVD player on Amazon.com.

Even though it is way too early to tell, HD-DVD seems to have the upper hand now. Some even say BR is dead and burried. Sony and Pioneer havent released their players yet but since the main issue is picture quality of the encoded movies, I dont see how things could possibly change (even on dual layer BR). Or maybe sony wants to use VC-1 and pay roaylties to Micro$oft :slight_smile: How ironic would that be!!!

We need to think outside the box here. Alot of this format stuff will not matter for the majority of the discs in circulation. Once people can buy a burner and a blank disc, 60% of the discs on the planet will be used to hold downloaded movies, and 60% of these movies will be porn.

Its just data. Who cares about the format or the codec (or the inevitably-breakable copy protection). Studies have shown that 80% of the data flowing over the internet is p2p, and most of that is movies and porn. My point is: the data that ends up on the blank discs will be the same data that is flowing over the internet p2p. Where else is this data going to go?

After a short lag, players will be released that accept HD and BR discs into standalone players with a many codecs built in. But it will still be easier just to keep the data on your hard disk and stream it over the network to your xbox-360 running xbmc…

This HD vs. BR war is not going to end the codec war or the piracy war. While the industry fiddles, and as the burners and media remain unavailable/expensive and as the war continues, people will still be ripping and downloading, and they will just use 320GB, 500GB, 750GB, and (probably this year) 1TB hard disks to store it. Would be nice to back it up but the fact is you can just download it all again later if your disk crashes. 30 and 50GB blank media are starting to again seem anemic when confronted with 1TB drives.