Blu-Ray Declares itself HD format winner!

Buckeyefan 1

Buckeyefan 1

Audioholic Ninja
It's going to be awhile before Netflix and Blockbuster online adopt purchasing Blu ray and HD DVD titles to replace their millions of existing DVD's. The Joe six packs of the world get their movies via rental, not purchasing them. Joe six pack is more than thrilled with the clarity and sound of a 480i dvd compard to 240-288i sd cable, so pq won't win the overall war. Sub $250 pricing of players and the ability to get these new releases to the rental giants - Netflix and Blockbuster will IMO.

Personally, I'd rather have all my cable channels in HD than pay $600 for a player and $25 and up for HD discs.

A $199 HD player with the ability to rent HD movies for < $20 a month may sway me, but that will be some time down the road.
 
Bryce_H

Bryce_H

Senior Audioholic
Buckeyefan - Netflix has had Blu-Ray and HD-DVD available for rental since each was introduced - at no extra cost!

The player cost is my hindering factor right now.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
Yep, Netflix started doing the HD formats immediately, and Hollywood Video told me the other day that they would soon be carrying them as well, as soon as this month.
 
E

Electone

Audioholic
I am following this format war with great interest. I prefer HD DVD at the moment for personal reasons, but I can't deny Blu-ray's advantages such as greater manufacturer and studio support. The BDA is cocky as hell and I really hope they fall flat on their faces. Most of their players are double the cost of a similar HD DVD player white their software titles look inferior to the HD DVD version.

I've decided to wait this one out. The really good titles haven't been released yet. Buying HD discs just for the sake of watching HD is not a good enough reason for me to shell out the big bucks right now. I'd rather watch a great movie in SD, than a crap movie in HD.
 
mtrycrafts

mtrycrafts

Seriously, I have no life.
Electone said:
The really good titles haven't been released yet. .

I would say that is because of printing capacity of these discs?
 
Tom Andry

Tom Andry

Speaker of the House
I've actually gotten an HD DVD disc from Netflix when I ordered a SD movie because it had both versions. Worked fine in the Oppo but the 2partsfusion didn't like it so much.
 
farscaper

farscaper

Audioholic
I've read in a couple of blogs out there that the Blu-ray system is expensive. That there is a much larger cost for studios to choose to go with the Blu-ray system. This larger expense hurts the smaller studios and therefore pushes them to HD-DVD.

I haven't found an explaination on where this extra expense is.
Anyone hear anything more about this?
 
D

davo

Full Audioholic
I'm not sure how much more the Blu-ray player is to make over the HD-DVD player since they are both using blue laser's.

I thought this was in interesting bit of info: (Wikipedia)

Muslix64's exploit

On December 26, 2006 a person using the alias "muslix64" posted a utility named BackupHDDVD and its source code for a working AACS decryptor on the doom9.org forums. The program is not an exploit or hack per se. Rather it is a tool that can be used to decrypt AACS protected content once one knows the encryption key. As such, it is no surprise or indication of vulnerability that such a program is possible and it can be seen as merely an implementation of the publicly available standard AACS Guide. However, Muslix64 claims to have found title keys in main memory while playing HD-DVD disks using a software player, and that finding them is not difficult.[13] Details of how to do this have not been revealed.

On January 2, 2007 "muslix64" published a new version of his/her program, with volume key support.[1]

Cyberlink, developers of PowerDVD maintain that their software was not used as part of the exploit.[2]

The claimed attack (extraction of the encryption keys from a software player) highlights the inherent weakness of software movie players for the PC platform. The use of encryption doesn't offer any true protection in this scenario since the software player must have the encryption key available somewhere in memory and there's no way to protect against a determined hacker extracting the encryption key (if everything else fails the user could run the program in a virtual machine making it possible to freeze the program and inspect all memory addresses without the program knowing). Avoiding such attacks would require changes to the PC platform (see Trusted Computing) or that the content distributors do not permit their content to be played on PCs at all (by not providing the companies making software players with the needed encryption keys). Alternatively, they could use the AACS system's revocation mechanism to revoke a specific software player after it is known to have been compromised. In that case, the compromised players could still be used to break old titles but not newer releases as they would be released without encryption keys for the compromised software players requiring hackers to break other players. The latter alternative is not a desirable option, because it would result in legitimate users of compromised players being forced to upgrade or replace their player software in order to view new titles.

On January 13, 2007 "LordSloth" on Doom9 discovered how to grab the volume license keys from WinDVD's memory. With that discovery, it became possible to take backup of HD-DVDs. Later that day, the first pirated HD-DVD, Serenity, was uploaded on a private torrent tracker. (end quote)

Haven't seen anything on pirated blu-ray yet.
 
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B

Bluesmoke

Audioholic Chief
I'm on the fence. But I saw Blackhawk Down the other day and it blew me away (audiowise mainly). I saw Batman Begins with the True HD track but this was something else.

I then learned that virtually every single Blu-ray exclusive movie has Lossless sound. On the HD DVD side, there's about 5 to 6. That really blows if it becomes the standard. And judging by the huge number of titles coming, I might be forced to swing that way since I want to get a PS3.
 
stratman

stratman

Audioholic Ninja
I still think it's a wise idea to wait and see what happens with the dual format players about to hit the market, it hurts to start an expensive hi-def library that becomes obsolete.
 
MACCA350

MACCA350

Audioholic Chief
stratman said:
I still think it's a wise idea to wait and see what happens with the dual format players about to hit the market, it hurts to start an expensive hi-def library that becomes obsolete.
IMHO, I don't think it'll hurt that much, you've still got the player and can still watch the movies you bought. So you may have to buy a new player in a couple of years if the format you already bought fails, but by then they'll be dirt cheep anyway. Everything becomes obsolete.

cheers
 
stratman

stratman

Audioholic Ninja
MACCA350 said:
IMHO, I don't think it'll hurt that much, you've still got the player and can still watch the movies you bought. So you may have to buy a new player in a couple of years if the format you already bought fails, but by then they'll be dirt cheep anyway. Everything becomes obsolete.

cheers
The problem would be that if you chose the wrong format, and your player only supports that format, once your player stops working.....? A bit like Beta vs Vhs, once the equipment wasn't being manufactured anymore (Beta)you were at the mercy of your existing gear, once that failed...? See my point? And 25.00-30.00+ per title X number of movies you want, it can get expensive fast.
 
RLA

RLA

Audioholic Chief
Lol... tell that to all the laserdisc early adopters
Hold on there big guy, While you were all watching VHS in Prologic us early adopters were watching LD in all its glory with DD and DTS soundtracks. I went through sevreral LD players over about a six year period until the Panasonic DVD A-110 was introduced. I still remember WoWing people with the LD and Runco CRT Fp combo with titles like the Shadow with DTS;) Just for grins recently my son and I pulled the LD out of the closet to rewatch some old movies. As good as we thought LD looked in the 80's and 90's it was fairly painful to watch now, but the soundtracks were still awesome
 
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mike c

mike c

Audioholic Warlord
LD hurt because there aren't any universal players today (simply because of the size)

and believe me it hurt me a lot, I have 8 LD players (from 8 rooms) that shout to hell with sony. (7 are sony btw, 1 is pioneer universal player that plays VCD's/CD's - that one still works)
 
stratman

stratman

Audioholic Ninja
I still have a Pioneer CLD-D604, it's in mint condition, it plays both sides, and the only reason I still have it is: one of my LD titles is out of print in DVD, so unti'll I have that title transfered to DVD I'll keep the old dinosaur.:)
 
RLA said:
Hold on there big guy, While you were all watching VHS in Prologic us early adopters were watching LD in all its glory with DD and DTS soundtracks.
Ah, you're just OLD... lol. Ray also had to walk through 10' of snow... uphill... both ways... to get his laserdiscs. :)
 
MACCA350

MACCA350

Audioholic Chief
stratman said:
The problem would be that if you chose the wrong format, and your player only supports that format, once your player stops working.....? A bit like Beta vs Vhs, once the equipment wasn't being manufactured anymore (Beta)you were at the mercy of your existing gear, once that failed...? See my point? And 25.00-30.00+ per title X number of movies you want, it can get expensive fast.
That won't be a problem with this war because they've already announced dual format players.

cheers:)
 
stratman

stratman

Audioholic Ninja
MACCA350 said:
That won't be a problem with this war because they've already announced dual format players.

cheers:)
That was my point:) It's not wise to start a hi-def collection now, dual format players are not out yet, and who's to say they will be in the next 6 months. Unless you buy a machine now, stick to one format, and then buy a dual format player, if and when they hit the market. Again, you're spending quite a wad of cash for lack of patience.:) Then again if you have the money.....:D
 
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