Obituary: HD DVD 2002-2008
Toshiba's decision to end its production of HD DVD players and recorders effectively marks the death of the optical disc format once touted as the natural successor to the phenomenally popular DVD. HD DVD was born in 2002 out of the apparent unwillingness of Toshiba and a number of other DVD Forum members to back a blue-laser …
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Yes, it was collusion
To Danny
No the Market didn't decide it was decide by the businesses, Rental Store's, Electronics Stores, the Studios and the marketing types. Yes Tosh tried to advance HD-DVD by selling the cheap players but it was too little too late. Had the X-Box add-on been a more reasonably priced and had retailers like Target and Best Buy been less biased things might have been different. In particular Block Busters decision to side with BluRay is perhaps the most significant. It wasn't until there were significant numbers of movies to rent that DVD really started to kill off VHS for good. The same applied to HD. No one buys a new player and lots of discs, so the lack of any rental disc to make use of your shiny new HD-DVD player was the real killer and the consumer didn't get to make that decision.
And no I'm not a fan boy I knew one would win and I'm not bothered which. Sure I have a HD-DVD player and with the free disc's I got with it it was cheaper than a replacement standard DVD with free upscaling.
HDD and Flask will kill blueray
There is a box availible to add alaptop HDD and plau your movies onto you television set. It is cheep and is becoming popular. This si so with the TIVO boxes. So sooner than later no one will use disk but flash hddds. So i ent worry about blue ray. Now with the cheep DVD doal layer, I still have to keep am in=mmage of the DVD on my hard disk drive because after time the dam disk wount work. Using Virtual Drive software work wounders. So I now giving my verdict on Blueray. rest in peace too.
@RainForestGuppy
Comparing the film market to the o/s market is a bit silly, theres normally competing software as well. its not as if word processors are only on windows and graphic software on solaris.
Films dont really have competing products, if you want toy story picking up a copy of shrek is not the same, both good films but different.
and it seems that the majority of people want a single format too, not a bluray for x% of the market hddvd for y% and vhd for %z
@Michael Compton
Since when did HD-DVD have 25GB a layer? Only BD supports this.
HD-DVD infact supports "just" 15GB per layer - therefore a quadlayer HD-DVD is "only" 10GB more than a dual-layer Bluray discs.
Just surprised nobody picked up on this sooner!
@SSU
Only benefit was better capacity??
Duh, thats the whole point, 1080p movies with uncompressed multi-channel sound take up a lot of space. Thats a huge benefit for the home cinema market- which with the advent of "cheap" 1080p screens is becoming less-niche by the day.
Dont get me wrong DVD has its place and will continue to be the No1 for a long time- as essentially its the new VHS (in playback terms anyway), but I know more than a few people (who have just HD screens, but not the kind of cinema system we have) who are looking at getting BD to get the most from their HD TVs.
Get the facts straight
Before this gets out of hand:
1. Single layer Hd DVD= 15gb Dual Layer= 30GB Triple Layer=51GB (improved data density or somthing)
2. BluRay SL= 25GB DL= 50GB 4L= 100GB so 200GB requires at least 8Layers.
3. Both formats support 1080p and both use compressed video on all releases, infact they both use the same codec
4. BDA's Java system is supposed to be an absolute dog to code for, where as MS's HDi is a lot more convenient. As for Java being more open, leading to Linux support - that won't happen due to AACS (the same reason why there is no official playback of DVD on Linux)
5. HD DVD did have data discs available (verbatim and Imation etc) although the writers were no as mumerous and widely available as BluRay writers
6. As Daniel B said, HDDVD has been ademant from the very beginning that they have no intention of introducing region coding. Everything else is speculation.
7. Blu Ray outsold HD DVD in total disc sales 65% to 35% not 3:1. compared to having a potential player base of 90% to 10% so the attach rate of discs per player is greater for HD DVD.
Downloadable content, ISPs looking into download caps for bandwidth "hogs"
ISPs are intensely looking into download caps apparently due to what they are calling bandwidth "hogs". See below article
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/time-warner-download-too-much-and-you-might-pay-30-a-movie/
This might change the equation for downloadable content replacing movies on physical media.
Re: @Michael Compton
I'm not sure what you mean that layers are easier to add to HD-DVD than BD. I still have to see any HD-DVD DL in the market.
BD-RE are pretty cheap nowadays, the price has dropped a lot, single layer discs are going for just over 10 Dollars each here in the States and double layers (50GB) are still expensive but price will drop and quickly (just a year ago one BD-RE SL was 24 dollars).
Also, in the works is a 4L disc with 200GB capacity.
I'm a professional photographer and disc capacity is the thing I'm most interested in and that's why I backed BD since the start. HD-DVD simply was never an option to me.
BD DL = 50GB, HD-DVD DL=30GB, that's 20GB difference: HUGE!
Luca
Re: Get the facts straight
>2. BluRay SL= 25GB DL= 50GB 4L= 100GB so 200GB requires at
>least 8Layers.
Actually the work TDK is doing with Sony is a double sided disc 4L for a total of 200GB, and later 8L each side.
It doesn't matter, even double sided 200GB is great to have.
As for point 7:
>Blu Ray outsold HD DVD in total disc sales 65% to 35% not 3:1
HD-DVD gave away TONS of free discs, so the base is irrelevant since we all very well know what those discs are and none of them interesting in my opinion. Also the HD-DVD camp has the habit of counting out the PS3 when counting the hardware sales but then counting the PS3 when it's time to divide the number of movies sold by the number of machines in circulation. This is a very well proved fact, one which I find a little too convenient.
Who cares anyway, HD-DVD is dead, good riddance and long live Blue Ray (10 years or so until the next format war ;-) ).
Luca
PS: Remember that was Toshiba that wanted the format war in the first place.
@Anne van der Bom
How old are you ??? ... I thought I was pathetic coz I'm bolding and working Saturday nites (should have quoted the work part ... getting bored and reading el Reg rather) but I can go reassured seeing that some speak of a wonderful shopping experience, where do you go Harrods (still)? or like most of us HMV & Virgin ... or online, even eBay maybe. And you always go to concerts because listening to music at home is not that a thrilling experience.
I thought the unpacking of a DVD was as the latex wrapping of the bishop e.g. an interesting but lame moment compared with what is supposed to follow.
And yes iTunes Store does not sell because the tune does not come all blistery and stickerish. Oh you bet that iTunes will fail on the movie renting front for the same reason.
Here is an other silly idea: Virgin is launching a new "HDD wrapping" scheme so it can be nervously unwrapped when home, for the really nostalgic ones they may even offer a "burn as you buy",(I've always been amazed by people looking at the recorded face of a CD/DVD as if they'd be able to see/listen to what's on it) and btw I'm proud to announce el Reg is now shipping its daily blistered print copy (for a fee) will you buy it?
But don't worry the HDD wotsit comes with the ability to burn the film 7 times ... so plenty of plastic to waste.
The point to all of this?
Can I ask whats the point in half of these spats?
Does it really matter if someone else doesnt agree that blueray/bd/hd-dvd/cd/tape/porn is as awesome as you think it is?
Do you really think that by constructing your point of view in various ways that all of a sudden people are going to stop and go "ahh he is right what a smart little geek this one is"
pointless flame fuelled by an emptiness elsewhere in life Id imagine.
In 5 years time we will have another media format and another 5 years after that, its called evolution.
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