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Game over!


Brian Smith
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I read today that Nexflix is lifting it's limitation on how much streaming video you can watch from their site, now it's going to be unlimited for all but the cheapest plans. This is going to have a big impact on how streaming video is perceived and treated since you don't have to wait days to get your movies any longer. For now the video is transmitted in SD but as the bandwidth grows so will the resolution, in a few years we'll be able to stream HD quality video. LG is working with Nexflix to create a desk top box that will allow you to watch these video's on your TV so it's already in the works!

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I think the players are dieing breed. Soon all entertainment would fly through the internet. The reason we don't have it going already is the fact that we've had enough of loading bars and long download time, so we have to wait for a faster broadband connection. So the next step is going to be online HD stream and I don't think it will take few years to get there.

 

I would wait few months before spending a fortune on expensive players and wasteful (and expensive) media...even though I don't know what I'll do after the football season is over :confused: ...might find myself reading a book:eek:

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I think the players are dieing breed. Soon all entertainment would fly through the internet. The reason we don't have it going already is the fact that we've had enough of loading bars and long download time, so we have to wait for a faster broadband connection. So the next step is going to be online HD stream and I don't think it will take few years to get there.

 

I would wait few months before spending a fortune on expensive players and wasteful (and expensive) media...even though I don't know what I'll do after the football season is over :confused: ...might find myself reading a book:eek:

 

I have always thought that technology and media is so different from the Beta - VHS days that the old scenario doesn't apply today. We have and make HD-DVDs, we also have bought apple TVs and loaded them up with HD movies and Still renderings for clients, we have created custom shows, and loaded them on mac minis, with startup scripts to launch HD quicktimes, there are many ways to approach these problems, Hardware is much less important these days, content is king.

 

On to your other point, wouldn't a Patriots - Giants SB be the best? our NYC office and Boston office have some (not so) friendly rivalry developing.

 

-Nils

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"Why wait? With FiOS...Packages offering up to 30 Mbps downloads and 5 Mbps uploads (and even higher in some locations)

 

'up to' being the operable phrase. I get a result of about 14/3.5 using Speakeasy's check. Verizon tech support doesn't think they have to do much to improve a number like that.

 

I used to get about 10/2.5 with a cable modem, but fairly regular downtime. In a year or so of Fios not one minute of being offline that I've even noticed.

 

I suspect that streaming movies will be like buying music files from websites--'CD quality' as a way of saying compressed but sounds similar to a CD so long as you use a music system that you can put entirely in a toaster slot. With regular DVDs there are quite visible JPEG artifacts sometimes. Will downloadable movies actually be 'DVD quality' or just a more compressed approximation of what you get on physical media?

 

However, I am not going to be sad to see video-rental stores fade into history. This morning I had to return a DVD my son got weeks ago that we didn't realize was not returned. Its going to cost me more in late fines than the stupid thing was new. And when I want to see a movie that just came out, why do I have to hope its available?

 

As for the format war, I'm sitting it out for the moment, for personal viewing. If I need to author HD for work, I'll buy whatever I need then and not worry about the long-term viability of the format.

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I suspect that streaming movies will be like buying music files from websites--'CD quality' as a way of saying compressed but sounds similar to a CD so long as you use a music system that you can put entirely in a toaster slot. With regular DVDs there are quite visible JPEG artifacts sometimes. Will downloadable movies actually be 'DVD quality' or just a more compressed approximation of what you get on physical media?

 

I purchased my wife a Tivo for Christmas, which uses the Amazon unbox service for Movie downloads. I tried it the first time the other day, and was impressed with the download speed and the quality. Bear in mind that I was watching on a 15 year old 29" tube TV, but I was impressed enough that I'll definitely do it again.

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  • 2 weeks later...

They're certainly correct - even with the price cuts Blu Ray is now at something like 95% market share to 5% for HDDVD (the 5% didn't get the memo, or maybe they're all animators who own HDDVD burners and bought the players for presentations?) and soon there won't be any movies for it. Blu Ray players will get under the $200 price point (which seems to be extremely important for some reason) by the November shopping spree and word on the street is Sony's got the cost to manufacture PS3s down from $800 to $400 so I wouldn't be surprised if it retails for $300 shortly after they drop the 80GB model (soon).

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think the last nail is officially being put in the coffin of HD-DVD. I just read that Toshiba is abandoning production of all it's HD-DVD players. The Warner blu-ray deal essentially sealed the deal. C-mon Brian Smith! You started this thread saying it was over for Blu-Ray. You need to come in here and raise the white flag.

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I think the last nail is officially being put in the coffin of HD-DVD. I just read that Toshiba is abandoning production of all it's HD-DVD players. The Warner blu-ray deal essentially sealed the deal. C-mon Brian Smith! You started this thread saying it was over for Blu-Ray. You need to come in here and raise the white flag.

 

yeah it's over. what really sucks for hd dvd is that warner agreed to switch to hd dvd if it could secure another exclusive studio. fox was ready to sign with hd dvd and at the last minute went to sony to see if they wanted to make a better offer. sony paid fox $120million to not make the switch and that was that. money talks. once again, the better, finished, format loses. next time i'll know better to bet on the inferior format with glitches.

 

good reading... http://www.amazon.com/tag/blu%20ray/forum?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx12NKTHNUJD6TS&cdThread=Tx3KF4W6K1XKNXR&displayType=tagsDetail

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yeah it's over...once again, the better, finished, format loses. next time i'll know better to bet on the inferior format with glitches.

 

At the 11th hour, Fox went to Sony with its concerns and received a reported $120 million payout to stay with Blu-ray...With no studio joining them on the HD DVD side, Warner's hand was forced and it went with Blu-ray, receiving a reported $500 million for doing so.

 

So $120 mil and $500 mil to not do something? It good work if you can get it.

 

I guess it is over. Like Nils, I don't own any of this equipment, so I'm just watching. There's obviously quite a lot at stake for some, however.

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here's what's coming next - ultra high definition. 16 times the number of pixels of 1080p.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Video

 

actually i think it's safer to say 4K Academy is next, but regardless, I'm sure there will be another format war.

 

 

4k is great, but why would the general public ever need that for their homes? People are typically happy with 50" & under TVs. The only big improvement you'll see 4k work is in projector technology. I honestly think that we'll be hitting a digital TV threshold & move onto a completely new technology like holographic imagery and/or interactive media (

).
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4k is great, but why would the general public ever need that for their homes? People are typically happy with 50" & under TVs. The only big improvement you'll see 4k work is in projector technology. I honestly think that we'll be hitting a digital TV threshold & move onto a completely new technology like holographic imagery and/or interactive media (
).

 

so that instead of just seeing an actor's individual pores, we can see microorganisms coming out of them

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Shit, my parents didn't get a color TV until after I graduated from high school. And now that the format for HD is won, within minutes the talk is about 4K and higher resolutions.

 

There will NOT be a mainstream change to resolution higher than 1080p for many a year. That being said, there most likely will be a market for higher resolution video production for special installations, such as sales centers. The lack of wide demand for such TV sets means that they will cost big bucks, but higher end clients will be able to afford them, and will start demanding them to make themselves look fancier than the competition.

 

I worked on a sales center last year where the client didn't like our design, because it didn't have enough HD TV screens. We were proposing three, but the client had seen a competitor's sales center with 4 screens, so he insisted on 5.

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Ian's right, 1080p is here to stay for many years - it's the standard and there's no particularly good reason to change.

 

And BTW, Brian - give it up, Blu Ray's got the money, the power and the women. Better backers, better video game system integration, better marketing and it's a better technology with a better name, of course it was going to win. It's been obvious since both formats were announced.

 

The next step is for it to become affordable, which will start to happen this year - watch for the PS3's price to go down to $300 and an under $200 price point for Blu Ray players in November as companies ramp up production and more models enter the market now that the format war is over.

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I'd be willing to bet that this format will be over by spring...

 

I'll take that action.

 

Andrew, you lost.

 

Brian may have bet on the wrong horse, but he called the end of the race correctly. All he said after that was that if Warner went exclusively HD-DVD it would be nearly impossible for BluRay to catch up. But over it is, and it's not even spring yet.

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It surprises me that this type of format war would happen in the first place. After cd's were introduced, there wasn't such a war (to my knowledge). I thought something had been learned from the VHS/Betamax thing.

 

I'm looking forward to purchasing a Toshiba Blu-ray player. I wonder if they will offer a dual-format like LG and Samsung have?

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And BTW, Brian - give it up, Blu Ray's got the money, the power and the women. Better backers, better video game system integration, better marketing and it's a better technology with a better name, of course it was going to win. It's been obvious since both formats were announced.

 

 

easy to say in hindsight. there are over a million hd dvd player purchasers that didnt think it was so obvious. if warner had gone hd dvd, bluray would have lost without a doubt. few industry experts have argued as much. as the media has made it widely known, warner was about to sign with hd until fox took a $120 million payout from sony at the last minute to stay blu exclusive. for anyone to say it was obvious is ridiculous. hd dvd snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, plane and simple. money talks and they just didnt pony up enough cash.

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It surprises me that this type of format war would happen in the first place. After cd's were introduced, there wasn't such a war (to my knowledge). I thought something had been learned from the VHS/Betamax thing.

 

I'm looking forward to purchasing a Toshiba Blu-ray player. I wonder if they will offer a dual-format like LG and Samsung have?

 

there's almost always a format war for any format so popular. CD was challenged by the MiniDisc and Digital Audio Tape by Sony and the Digital Compact Cassette by Philips.

 

look at CompactFlash vs. Memory Stick vs. MultiMediaCard vs. SmartMedia. it will never end.

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I agree, saying it was obvious is ridiculous because each format had it's positives and negatives and they both could deliver the quality needed for today’s TV's. I thought HD-DVD had it locked up mainly because the players and movies were so much cheaper and the format was standardized, if the studios hadn’t started switching sides HD would have most likely won.

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easy to say in hindsight. there are over a million hd dvd player purchasers that didnt think it was so obvious. if warner had gone hd dvd, bluray would have lost without a doubt. few industry experts have argued as much. as the media has made it widely known, warner was about to sign with hd until fox took a $120 million payout from sony at the last minute to stay blu exclusive. for anyone to say it was obvious is ridiculous. hd dvd snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, plane and simple. money talks and they just didnt pony up enough cash.

 

I said it in foresight! You started this thread in August to declare HDDVD the winner (and it wasn't the first of these threads) and I disagreed. I was right and now I'm gloating.

 

Andrew, you lost.

 

Brian may have bet on the wrong horse, but he called the end of the race correctly. All he said after that was that if Warner went exclusively HD-DVD it would be nearly impossible for BluRay to catch up. But over it is, and it's not even spring yet.

 

You're right, I'll give you that one. I was disagreeing on both the timing of the endgame and the possibility of Toshiba winning. I didn't think it would end this quickly. I actually got a $99 HDDVD player on the assumption the a Blu Ray player back in the fall would cost more than $99 plus the price of a Blu Ray player after the format war ended. I don't have much time until my HDDVD player becomes obsolete so I might be out the $99.

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