"HD DVD" vs. "Blu-ray Disc" -- NEITHER WILL WIN

[Jerry Jones]

http://www.mercextra.com/blogs/takahashi/2007/08/16/blu-ray-versus-hd-dvd-how-about-neither/

Here’s an interesting thought from Michael Malcolm, founder and CEO of Kaleidescape, the Mountain View company that makes video servers that have a load of hard drives and can store umpteen million DVDs. At a dinner at Quattro in East Palo Alto last night, Malcolm said that neither format may be a winner in the high-end home electronics market.

...and this...

Malcolm said he recently went to a show where a company showed him a scaled DVD movie playing side by side with an HD-DVD machine. They were holding a contest on two 1080p 50-inch TVs to see who could identify the image and the right player. Malcolm said about half of the people were guessing wrong. That’s because the DVD image was scaled up by the Realta HQV image processing chip from Silicon Optix. That chip makes a huge difference in quality, Malcolm said.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

It's amazing that both camps didn't get together on one format right from the start. They could have pushed for a MUCH quicker crossover to the HD format if they had done that.

And they both would be making money selling players and software right now instead of spending valuable resources battling in the marketplace.

[Dr Mordrid]

Typical though.

I've seen some test images from various new scaling algorithms and yes, they're extremely impressive. Maybe something like this will rattle some sense into them, maybe not. One things for sure though; if they keep this up some other higher density, cheaper tech will come along and make the issue moot. Some may not even have moving parts.

[Jerry Jones]

This Silicon Optics technology is freaking impressive.

http://www.hqv.com/technology/index1/noise_reduction.cfm?CFID=10230877&CFTOKEN=41834190

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

By the way, I won't be getting either of the high definition players until they put a combination "HD DVD" and "Blu-ray Disc" burner into a laptop computer.

When that happens, and when the price is reasonable, I'll bite.

Until I see a good, cheap dual format burner, I'm happy with DVDs.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

If BR players continue to cripple BR-R playback (supposedly at Sony's behest) and DVD players come out with the Silicon Optix chipset both camps may see virtually no sales of HD decks and continued, or expanded, sales of widescreen conventional DVD's.

Uppance: argue too long over standards and a third party will come along and eat your cake

Edit: just found out Toshibas new HD-XA2 has the Silicon Optix scaling chip. So do video processors by NEC, Algolith and Calibre.

[wkulecz]

We've been watching 480p DVD along with 720p & 1080i HD broadcasts over cable on a 65" rear projection set for the past four+ years and to be honest, the difference is not worth paying a lot of money for. I'm sure the scalers in sets now are better than what is in our Toshiba.

IF either camp expects normal folks to fork over serious extra money for the "better" quality of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD they are seriously deluding themselves. More pixels won't salvage a lame story, the quality difference from more pixels doesn't blow one away like DVD vs. VHS did and the improved scalers reduce the percieved difference.

--wally.

Edit: Lack of support for menus would be a big virtue for me. The self-indulgent "must watch" crap on DVDs really annoys the hell out of me! Every time "invald" lights up when I press FF or chapter skip, I just want to put my hands around some A-hole "creative's" neck and squeeze!

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm sure the scalers in sets now are better than what is in our Toshiba.

Oh yeah. The typical scaler is 4 or 16 taps while Silicon Optix is 1024 tap, which is more like military parallel processing arrays.

[Apulo]

Silicon Optix is expensive stuff though, same as HD equipment. If they want to deliver a blow to the HD camp, they'll have to drop prices so 200 Euro class DVD players can have this chip built-in. That's not going to happen anytime soon.

[Dr Mordrid]

They'll drop, probably sooner than later because using 1024 tap isn't patentable and there are other chipmakers willing to undercut.

[Marshmallowman]

yes internet pron is the way of the future...