HD - DVD by Fall 2003 ?

[George Bellefontaine]

Top major studio executives met to discuss the pros and cons of HD-DVD and the outcome suggests we could see HD-capable dvd players and pre-recorded media as early as Fall 2003. Warner Home Video is taking the lead, as they did with the intro of standard dvd, but the trouble is, Warner is pushing a souped up version of the red laser. What we really want is the Blu-ray with more than 19.3 MBPS bit rate.
You can read the entire article at Videobusiness.com/news




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[JonMarsh]

Not good that Microsoft is trying to back Warner in getting what is essentially a DVD-9 disk to work for HD, by trying to up the efficiency of the compression algorithms, and settling for an average data rate of 5 MBit/sec. What are they trying to do, HD via DIVX?

It's not just a competition over what level of quality and DRM is used, it's also about who get's to license their IP to everyone else- also a lucrative part of the deal.

Plus, there intention is to seriously raise the copy protection ante with this- I wonder if they'll even allow any kind of PC playback. As is, Microsoft officialy doesn't want DVD above 480P scaling, and hardware vendors like ATI are restricted from having component dongle output DVD enabled over 480P, though that is so, so stupid (the horse is already out of the barn). Anyone wanting to try to copy in component format as for professional video can obviously buy a $200 transcoder and set the RGB output for any resolution they please.....

-Jon




Earth First!
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We'll screw up the other planets later....

[KS]

I'd seriously doubt it. It's my understanding that Warner (Toshiba) gets a royalty on every red laser DVD built so they are pushing it. These units don't even make minimum standards for HD and I doubt the other studios will go along with it. My guess would be Blue Ray sometime around 2005.

Ken

[John Holmes]

I'm more concerned about software support (a la DTS, 6.1, HDTV). It took a longtime for DTS to put out software though we had the hardware it seemed forever. And once the software did start to flow, they then cut the bit rate. Stories are'nt much different for DD-EX. And even with government mandate, we see the state of HDTV.

Dolby Digital 5.1 and Pro-Logic have been the only dependable items of the last few years. I am going to an HDTV but, it's main purpose is 480p DVD. Anything else that it "may" support I'll consider gravy.




"I came here, to chew bubble gum and kickass. And I'm all out of bubble gum!!!" My DVD's