"Blu-ray Disc" vs. "HD DVD": Neither Is Winning

[Hulk]

Jerry,

I have to hand it to you. You've outdone yourself. 10 consecutive posts. I've seen you do 5 or 6 on a regular basis but 10 is really extraordinary.

Another positive review:

D-Link MediaLouge DSM-750 gets 7 out of 10 from ZDNet:

http://review.zdnet.com/digital-media-receivers/d-link-medialounge-dsm/4505-6739_16-31524144.html

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

7 out of 10 is a crappy review. I wouldn't buy the product until it was a 9.

Do you have one of these devices Jerry? If not then that speaks volumes more than the last 10 posts you made.

Hey I'm all for losing the optical disc. But right now I can't bring anything but Satellite and Cable TV into my home in HD format that streams.

And call me sentimental but I'd like to have a library of HD content, disc cases and all, and a ripped version on the hard drive of my media PC. I say "ripped" but I mean legal backup on my hard drive since I own the disc. Just my all time favorite movies, maybe 50 of them. Available for my viewing, pausing, rewinding, immediately, with no server interuptions, passwords, logging in, or any other nonsense.

[Jerry Jones]

Then it's also doubtful, Mark, that you'll be buying the "Blu-ray Disc" hardware that you've been pushing for so long.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

I wouldn't buy the product until it was a 9.

[Hulk]

Jerry,

First, I haven't been pushing BR that's just me fulfilling Newton's 3rd Law. You push HD-DVD and something pushes back. In this case it's been me and BR pushing back

Second, you've been doing a pretty good job of pushing Apple lately

Third, I've seen H.264 and it can certainly look like a "10." It generally ain't the hardware's fault if it doesn't, it's the software. And by that I mean the actual video files. I believe as the compressionists get better so will the video. Again, same as DVD's evolution.

Jerry, you have to admit 10 consecutive posts is a lot. I didn't mean it as an insult. I marvel at your ability to pour through enormous amounts of information and pick out relevent segments. Jeez, without your posts and comments things would be pretty dull around here.

[Mehen]

Dual format players for t3h win. The average consumer just simply does not want to be bothered with making a choice. I know I don't, its too big a headache.

[Jerry Jones]

Not yet.

But I plan to buy an APPLE TV after I buy my first Macintosh.

I'm waiting to see the new products that APPLE will be offering in the wake of this month's brand new operating system... "Leopard" (version 10.5 of Mac OS X).

http://www.apple.com

There's a lot of speculation about a new "Nano" from APPLE that will replace the "Mini."

I'm waiting for that.

By the way, I fully admit I've been pushing APPLE, lately.

I sincerely believe that technology is better.

And you have the right to push Blu-ray Disc, if you feel so strongly about it.

But c'mon... you don't push Blu-ray Disc in response to my pushing HD DVD.

You push Blu-ray Disc even when I haven't posted anything about HD DVD.

And the fact of the matter is I don't really like either high definition format because I honestly believe optical discs are fast becoming relics of the past.

The only thing I like about HD DVD over Blu-ray Disc is the fact that it is CHEAPER.

That's it.

Other than that, I don't really care about either optical disc format.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

Do you have one of these devices Jerry?

[Hulk]

The only thing I like about HD DVD over Blu-ray Disc is the fact that it is CHEAPER.

That's it.

Other than that, I don't really care about either optical disc format.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

The only thing I like about Blu-Ray over HD-DVD is the greater native capacity per layer.
And other than that I don't care about the formats either.

You know if affordable hybrid burners and players came out we could live with both formats. Kind of like how the DVD +/- format war became irrelevent when all the burners could do both formats.

[paulw]

The only thing I like about HD DVD over Blu-ray Disc is the fact that it is CHEAPER.

That's it.
Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

The thing I like about HD DVD is that it's region free. But I guess if you live in the US that's not a consideration..

[Brian Ellis]

Don't you think that this discussion is sterile? It is neither you nor I who will decide who will win the battle but the general public wanting to buy the latest Hollywood blockbuster. As it is, the battle will continue for at least another year yet. So, in the words of Herbert Asquith, Wait and See.

[Jerry Jones]

But the war won't continue, don't you see?

It's already over.

Both high definition DVD formats have lost.

There won't be a winner.

The war is already over.

And the real winner is the hard drive and wireless streaming.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Fluff]

So what will the solution be? Ship movie watchers a 1tb drive with this months movies on it (40 movies), then they ship it back?

Then pay online for each key, and return the drive to the local video shop?

[Mehen]

hdd/streaming seems like more of a headache than deciding between Blu and HD. No thanks.

[Jerry Jones]

Actually, there's no need to "ship" a hard disk streamer anywhere.

The way it works is amazingly simple... just like the downloading of music.

Just download the movie or TV show you want to watch and you keep it on your hard disk and play it as many times as you wish.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

The APPLE iTunes software works on both Macintosh and PC.

Music

More than 6 million songs. 99¢ each.

Movies

New and classic films from $9.99.

Music Videos

More than 11,000, $1.99 each.

TV Shows

600 shows at $1.99 an episode.

Audiobooks

More than 30,000 titles.

Podcasts

100,000 and counting. 100% free.

iPod Games

$4.99 each.

Then you can use a media streaming device such as APPLE TV to watch the programs on your TV.

APPLE TV can stream video files that you store on the hard drive of any computer in your house.

This is done without wires.

You use Wi-Fi 802.11n wireless networking. That's the latest--and fastest--iteration of the Wi-Fi standard. Designed to support speeds of up to 200 Mbps, the 11n standard is fast enough (on paper, at least) to deliver the high bandwidth required to stream high definition video.

But you don't have to stream anything to your TV.

You can watch everything on your computer, if you wish.

But if you have a widescreen TV, then the most efficient way of watching purchased or home-created video is to stream to that TV from the computer using a streaming device.

The good news is that streaming devices are cheaper than high definition optical media drives.

The other great news is that they are smaller and don't require you to mess with wires and the endless job of labeling and organizing dozens of antiquated optical discs.

You don't have to buy from APPLE.

The file-based sale of TV and movies via the Internet is now common.

You can buy from:

1. Amazon Unbox:

http://www.amazon.com/unbox-video-downloads/b/ref=sa_menu_atv1/102-5922760-9162552?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=16261631&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd_r=1MAFM21TYWSRRCCVF0YQ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=304476501&pf_rd_i=507846

2. Apple iTunes:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

3. MovieLink:

http://www.movielink.com/

First, the movies and TV shows are cheaper when you download them.

Second, H.264 compression makes it possible now to download high definition movies and TV shows while keeping file size quite low.

Third, the downloaded movies and TV shows don't consume massive amounts of space on shelves in your home and you can keep everything nicely organized on your computer's hard disk.

Why invest hundreds of dollars in optical discs, players, recorders, drives, etc?

Hard disks are cheaper and faster!

We're also seeing the first of the solid-state storage devices.

Almost nobody at the university where I work uses optical discs these days.

Instead, they're using USB 2.0 mini drives to transport files.

The optical disc industry wants you to believe a "war" is still being fought between "HD DVD" and "Blu-ray Disc."

In truth, they're both too little, too late.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Tjalfe]

for this to work, broadband access needs to be available everywhere. This would be years away, if it happens at all. Till such time, movies will exist on disks.

Also, I believe the itunes store will only let you play your files on up to 6 devices, so down the road, 6 computers later, or a couple of computers / ipod/apple tv, and you will have to buy the movies again. That is, unless they come out with DRM free movies too.

[Hulk]

Yeah and how big a hard drive will those boxes hold? And how many drives?

And what happens if the drive crashes with a thousand dollars of downloaded movies on it?

Can you back them up?

Can you move them to another system?

Does it have to be proprietary software like Apples virus I-tunes?

And how long to download the movie?

And you have to have a really fast connection right?

And how good is the quality of these downloaded movies?

I guess they'll be 30 or 40GB like the Blu-Ray movies we're seeing?

That seems like a really long download doesn't it?

Like the other posters in this thread know this is nonsense at this point in time with this infrastructure for internet access.

Proprietary systems and not being able to "hold" the thing you bought to reload it if necessary is nuts in my opinion.

I would never buy a crappy 128kbps mp3 song. I can't listen to that garbage.

Now I'm locked into the quality of some movie that needs to be squeezed through my cable connection so I can download the 10GB version of the movie that should be 30GB?

No thanks.

[Mehen]

Imagine the MASSIVE bandwidth needed to support the world's movie purchases...