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

[Jerry Jones]

Brian,

MOST RECENT UNITED STATES BROADBAND ADOPTION STATISTICS:

47% of adults have high-speed internet connections at home as of early March 2007, up five percentage points from a year earlier.

Among individuals who use the internet at home, 70% have a broadband
connection while 23% use dialup.

SOURCE: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/217/report_display.asp

In addition, Pew compiled a report in PDF format here:

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband%202007.pdf

This has happened very quickly; it wasn't long ago when I was using dial-up.

It will happen quickly around the world, too.



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

Even the USA has broadband coverage to only a minority of subscribers, even if S. Korea does better. Dream on, Jerry...

[Tjalfe]

so of those 47%, how many have access to a line capable of streaming HD contents?
Broadband is defined as anything faster than dialup, is it not?.. where many 512Kbit lines out there are broadband, they cannot stream TV

[Brian Ellis]

There is no consumer demand and I don't see how it can be created. Very few persons even know what downloading HD is, how it works or what it entails. In any case, many ISPs impose a limit on monthly downloads (say, 1 Gb) and the greater your limit is, so the more you pay per month. Some even charge according to your downloaded bandwidth.

Where are the broadband providers? They are a figment of your imagination in most of the world.

Do you really think that Hollywood (or Bollywood) really want that hassle when they can sell optical discs, with an easily controlled profit margin? I can assure you that HD-DVD and BR discs are now in the shops and DVD renters here, with perhaps 100-200 titles in each, but sales are low (high cost compared with SD DVDs). What is perhaps significant is that HD TVs now have SD up-converting. I have a JVC 1080p LCD which up-converts to 760p from 576i. I don't know how they do it but the quality is remarkable. The only time I can see staircase artefacts is with very thin lines (like a violin string, for example) which is slightly off horizontal. I suggest that this is a reason why SD DVD sales are really booming and HD ones are morose (while HD or SD downloading does not exist, at all). Why pay for 30 Gb of data when you can get almost the same quality at 1/3 the cost? This may be one reason why HD is slow to catch on (no one broadcasts in HD here, either and there is no talk of any broadcasters investing in it, either: dammit, we are still on analogue broadcasting!!!). I watch digital from satellite but always in 576i (upgraded in the TV set).

[Evildead666]

Jerry:

1: the ISP's don't want to give us a huge bandwidth, it would cost them money to set it up, and they don't want to spend money, but make it. Its not consumer demand, it the ISP being kind and spending loads of cash, for a little bit extra from the subscriber, if that. Yes they can get more subscribers, but that also takes more money...

2: The broadband providers have to front the cash, to reap benefits far down the line. Businesses are all about making money NOW...

3: Hollywood are already up in arms about internet piracy. If they could have it their way, we'd have NO INTERNET. Its caused them nothing but hassle, and lost revenue apparently...give people more bandwidth, and they will download more.

Thats what seems to have happenned here...

My local video store is right next to a secondary school, with about 1500 kids attending.
The owner hasn't seen any kids in his store for years (except the young'uns who want to watch Ratatouille...).
I found out since I asked why he didn't have certain action movies, and horror movies. He replied that the majority of his clientele were middle aged women...

The ISP's are balking at the thought of having their networks choked by 30Mbps HD video.
Thats 30 times what people have actually. the infrastructure needs upgrading, so they are laying fibre. In the centre of the nations capital. By the time it gets here, I will have emigrated, and my parents will have gone back to the UK or the US to finish retirement.

edit : 2012 or 2015 seems right. Its taken 6 years to go from 512K to 1.6Mbps. The highest in this region is 10Mbps if you live right next to the exchange. I happen to be 4Km away from the exchange, poor me.

[Hulk]

Jerry,

I'm tired of this discussion. What's the point?

We are arguing the rate at which the future approaches. You say it approaches fast from a disc vs. streaming point of view. I say it approaches fast from a 1080p vs. 720p point of view. So what?

There are lots of people like me buying 1080p TV's and renting Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs to view them at 1920x1080 resolution. I'm in good company and I believe I made a well thought out purchasing decision. We are enjoy our home theater.

I have too much respect for you to continue to do this. I don't like taking pot shots at you more to "get up your ire" than to discuss and exchange ideas about video. Let's move on please.

So have you checked out any new video cameras lately?

[Jerry Jones]

Amount of time required for playback of an Apple TV download of a standard definition movie:

6 Mbps: less than 30 seconds
2 Mbps: about 1 minute
768 Kbps: about 1.5 hours

LINK: http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

Note how even seemingly small increases in broadband bandwidth results in an almost geometric increase in download speed.

I would submit that waiting even the 1.5 hours using a 768Kbps broadband connection involves less time and more convenience than driving to a DVD rental store, searching through the shelves for the right movie and then driving back home... and the price for the download is cheaper.



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

so of those 47%, how many have access to a line capable of streaming HD contents?
Broadband is defined as anything faster than dialup, is it not?.. where many 512Kbit lines out there are broadband, they cannot stream TV

[Jerry Jones]

http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages_b/ReallyNeed.html

Great article about up-converting players.

Brian, sales of "HD DVD" and "Blu-ray Disc" are indeed relatively low.

Consumers can see they're as dead as DISC-o.



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

I can assure you that HD-DVD and BR discs are now in the shops and DVD renters here, with perhaps 100-200 titles in each, but sales are low (high cost compared with SD DVDs). What is perhaps significant is that HD TVs now have SD up-converting. I have a JVC 1080p LCD which up-converts to 760p from 576i. I don't know how they do it but the quality is remarkable. The only time I can see staircase artefacts is with very thin lines (like a violin string, for example) which is slightly off horizontal. I suggest that this is a reason why SD DVD sales are really booming and HD ones are morose (while HD or SD downloading does not exist, at all). Why pay for 30 Gb of data when you can get almost the same quality at 1/3 the cost?

[Jerry Jones]

My point?

My point is that "HD DVD" and "Blu-ray Disc" are as dead as DISC-o.



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

Jerry, what's the point?

[Jerry Jones]

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/apple-tv-20-vs-blu-ray-dvd-hd-cable-the-comparison/

Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison

We used a very recent 40” Sony Bravia XBR4 television with 1080p and 120Hz support for our testing, and set all of our HDMI-connected playback devices to display at their best possible resolutions: the Blu-Ray Disc player was a PlayStation 3 console at 1080p, the Apple TV was set to its new 1080p mode, the Scientific Atlanta cable box was set to its maximum of 1080i, and the DVD player was the same PlayStation 3 at 1080p, set on normal upscaling mode. Four test screens were picked as representative of the film’s content, and a Nikon camera was used to shoot each paused screen at 1/80 of a second.

What We Saw

While the Blu-Ray version was the clear winner of the bunch, we were surprised by how well the Apple TV fared in comparison to the other formats we tested.

What impressed us about the Apple TV rental was that the video, despite needing to be sent over the Internet rather than residing comfortably on a DVD or Blu-Ray Disc, exhibited little in the way of motion blur or compression artifacts—it looked as good as could be expected from 720p, which is to say comfortably better than DVD quality, but shy of the best a Blu-Ray Disc can offer on a top TV. The Apple TV video also contained a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio track, which the HD cable version did not, and its sound didn’t suffer from obvious compression issues like the cable version did.

It’s also worth noting that the Blu-Ray Disc’s biggest video and audio advantages are real, but will be lost on many HDTV users. Since the majority of HDTVs sold before 2007 were not capable of displaying true 1080p output—most were capped at 720p or 1080i—the superior video quality of the Blu-Ray versions of movies won’t be noticeable on such sets, and the difference between the Apple TV and Blu-Ray versions will be less noticeable. If you’re using a TV without the ability to display 1080p video—especially if you don’t have a receiver capable of decoding the Blu-Ray Disc’s DTS-HD signal—an Apple TV rental will be an almost complete substitute for renting the Blu-Ray.

"HD DVD" and "Blu-ray Disc?"

Dead as DISCo.



APPLE TV: http://www.apple.com/appletv/

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Tjalfe]

Amount of time required for playback of an Apple TV download of a standard definition movie:

6 Mbps: less than 30 seconds
2 Mbps: about 1 minute
768 Kbps: about 1.5 hours

LINK: http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

Note how even seemingly small increases in broadband bandwidth results in an almost geometric increase in download speed.

I would submit that waiting even the 1.5 hours using a 768Kbps broadband connection involves less time and more convenience than driving to a DVD rental store, searching through the shelves for the right movie and then driving back home... and the price for the download is cheaper.



Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

those times are for buffering, not full download. this also requires an internet connection which always works, without hiccups, which all i have ever used have.
Having to wait an hour and a half to start watching a movie seems a bit long to me, and this is all SD, not HD content. HD sounds like an overnight buffering sort of affair.

[Mehen]

If free MP3's haven't replaced CD's, I see no reason why $$ movie downloads would replace DVDs/BluRay.
And if we address the topic of the thread... its pretty clear BluRay is winning right now.

[Jerry Jones]

Actually, the numbers strongly suggest Apple iTunes is beating both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD:

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/16111/

On Tuesday, January 15, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple had sold 7 million movies to date online via iTunes Store.

Therefore, we know:
• HD DVD has sold 2.5 million movies since April 2006 (20 months)
• Blu-ray has sold 6 million movies since June 2006, (18 months)
• Apple has sold 7 million movies since September 2006 (15 months)

Apple's iTunes Store has sold nearly three times more movies — in "near-DVD quality" 640x480 resolution and U.S.-only, no less — than HD DVD titles in 5 fewer months and more movies than Blu-ray titles in 2 fewer months - all without the support of many major Hollywood studios (all of whom are, of course, now onboard with Apple's new iTunes movie rentals, which will soon begin offering titles in High Definition (720p) with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound - only via Apple TV, for now).



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

Iits pretty clear BluRay is winning right now.

[Hulk]

Jerry you are an Apple fanboy.

[Jerry Jones]

And you are a Sony Blu-ray fan boy.

But there's an old Chinese proverb.

"It is better to be an Apple fan boy than the victim of a pixel-envy marketing ploy."

Hey, it rhymes.



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

Jerry you are an Apple fanboy.

[Elie]

Jerry your enthusiasm is admirable

While the Apple TV is ok for the average person that does not care about quality. 1080P will blow the doors out of 720p, I've seen both and know that you simple cannot compare the two.
Blu-Ray is not dead, you are forgetting some very important aspects why people will still buy Blu-ray media...

1-Blu-Ray supports 1080P and it's AMAZING! (I don't think you have acutally seen it otherwise you will not be knocking it down)

2-The studios that support Blu-Ray may be exlusively offering some block buster movie hits on blu-ray and not available for download.

3-people want to collect media like myself, I have over 150 DVD movie that I have bought from stores, I will not download and burn on DVD, because I don't get the extras including the box.
4-editors and production studios will have no choice but to burn HD content on Blu-ray, what are you going to say to customers, go and download the content from my server? hehe!

The battle between HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray is now over, this will encourage the consumer like myself to stock up on the best looking movies (eye candy) hits on Blu-ray and enjoy on 1080p TV's.


Cheers,
Elie