Lessons From The Death of HD-DVD

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I cannot believe this statement from a person trying to pass themselves off as knowing everything under the sun.

mayby microsoft was a partner, but to say that
they were puppets used by gates is silly.
If Microsoft wanted to get into this they would have, and they would have probably
won.

Maybe Microsoft was a partner???? And they would have probably won??? Has this foo been on another planet? Everyone and their grandmother knew that Microsoft jumped behind HD DVD when they were rebuffed by the BDA on VC-1 and HDi. Everyone in the industry heard about Gates getting into Springers face about getting BD+ out of the spec so bluray would play in PC's with window media player. When he was rebuffed, he huffed off and jump behind Toshiba.

Well pixeless, Microsoft was a partner, and HD DVD lost. So much for you half a$$ theories. I guess we can chalk this up to another moonshine moment.

[filecat13]

I read roughlydrafted.com several times a week to get some perspective on much of the over-the-top punditry I slog through on some of the mainstream sites. Yeah, Dilger can be over focused at times, but he almost always has a more reasoned and researched approach. He even includes verifiable resources.

I get really tired of seeing a Web pundit say something is a "fact" then offer absolutely no support other than his say-so that said fact really exists. Certain Internet clowns make a living off inventing outrageous, unsupported "facts" that drive sensation-seeking readers to their sites. Compared to them, Dilger looks like a freakin' Rhodes Scholar. (Which I'm pretty sure he is not. )

Anyway, at the risk of sounding agreeable, I think history shows MS has made a lifestyle out of screwing its partners--a lesson Apple learned the hard way and almost didn't recover from. In addition to finally thwarting another MS subterfuge, the nice thing about the BluRay victory is the presence of standardized formats in both the hard media and soft media.

We'll have to see if Apple does anything with BluRay or not, but either way MPEG-4 and H.264 are now both the de jure and de facto standards going forward for both hard (disc) and soft (download) media, and that has to be a good thing.

[diggity]

there is a rumour floating around here in australia that microsoft are in the mid stages of making a blu ray game console similar to that of the ps3. if this is true it makes you wonder how much effort they were putting into hd-dvd. it has only been a week and a half since toshibas announcement and already microsoft are building a blu ray console...seems suspiciously fast to me.

seems to be the old "secret underground basement" trick to me. i can see it now, three pale skinned engineers who rarely see the light of day building this console, being secretly funded by microsoft under the codename "aurora project" then one day... voila! a fully working model accompanied by the phrase " we knew bluray would win all along"

cheers: dazza

[Woochifer]

there is a rumour floating around here in australia that microsoft are in the mid stages of making a blu ray game console similar to that of the ps3. if this is true it makes you wonder how much effort they were putting into hd-dvd. it has only been a week and a half since toshibas announcement and already microsoft are building a blu ray console...seems suspiciously fast to me.

seems to be the old "secret underground basement" trick to me. i can see it now, three pale skinned engineers who rarely see the light of day building this console, being secretly funded by microsoft under the codename "aurora project" then one day... voila! a fully working model accompanied by the phrase " we knew bluray would win all along"

cheers: dazza

Sounds like a rumor campaign to me. A similar thread was started up in the High Def Digest forum with a linked story, except that the story is more than a year old! I think a lot of rumors got started up when Gates said last year that they'd be open to making a Blu-ray add-on available if HD-DVD lost the format war. I can see an add-on getting introduced, but not an integrated drive.

It would be relative easy for MS to integrate a Blu-ray drive into the console, but such a move would make little sense for a number reasons. First, it would bump up the price on the Xbox360, thus negating the console's price advantage over the PS3. Maybe it would come with an upgraded version, but not standard issue on all versions.

Also, Xbox360 games get published on DVD media. PS3 games use Blu-ray media. If the Xbox360 suddenly began using Blu-ray discs for games, that would leave existing Xbox360 owners out in the cold -- won't happen.

In actuality, I think Microsoft was about to announce a Xbox360 with an integrated HD-DVD drive at CES (and might even have a bunch of them already sitting in a warehouse somewhere), but those plans got scrapped when Warner dropped HD-DVD.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Sounds like a rumor campaign to me. A similar thread was started up in the High Def Digest forum with a linked story, except that the story is more than a year old! I think a lot of rumors got started up when Gates said last year that they'd be open to making a Blu-ray add-on available if HD-DVD lost the format war. I can see an add-on getting introduced, but not an integrated drive.

It would be relative easy for MS to integrate a Blu-ray drive into the console, but such a move would make little sense for a number reasons. First, it would bump up the price on the Xbox360, thus negating the console's price advantage over the PS3. Maybe it would come with an upgraded version, but not standard issue on all versions.

Also, Xbox360 games get published on DVD media. PS3 games use Blu-ray media. If the Xbox360 suddenly began using Blu-ray discs for games, that would leave existing Xbox360 owners out in the cold -- won't happen.

In actuality, I think Microsoft was about to announce a Xbox360 with an integrated HD-DVD drive at CES (and might even have a bunch of them already sitting in a warehouse somewhere), but those plans got scrapped when Warner dropped HD-DVD.

From what I am hearing, they are having a bit of a struggle getting XBOX360 to work with a bluray drive. It seems that as powerful as the XBOX360 is, it does not do well trying to handle PCM, DTHD and Dts MA lossless and AVC serperately, or together. Its seems that AVC at high bit rates(what you would find on a Disney bluray titles) causes the processing to overload and shut down the machine. Using PCM, or any of the advance lossless codecs cause the audio to skip and jump around. The XBOX360 was optimized for games, not high resolution video sources. Its processing was designed for games, not high resolution audio and video, so getting it to function like the PS3 is proving very difficult for the designers to accomplish. Beef knows more about its gaming prowess than I do, but on the video side of things, it was not design to do what they are asking it to do apparently.

[Woochifer]

From what I am hearing, they are having a bit of a struggle getting XBOX360 to work with a bluray drive. It seems that as powerful as the XBOX360 is, it does not do well trying to handle PCM, DTHD and Dts MA lossless and AVC serperately, or together. Its seems that AVC at high bit rates(what you would find on a Disney bluray titles) causes the processing to overload and shut down the machine. Using PCM, or any of the advance lossless codecs cause the audio to skip and jump around. The XBOX360 was optimized for games, not high resolution video sources. Its processing was designed for games, not high resolution audio and video, so getting it to function like the PS3 is proving very difficult for the designers to accomplish. Beef knows more about its gaming prowess than I do, but on the video side of things, it was not design to do what they are asking it to do apparently.

Interesting, because I remember Gates' comments made it sound like a Blu-ray drive would be relatively easy to offer as an add-on. Of course, vaporware has historically been MS' specialty.

Overheating issues have been the bane of the Xbox360. A report from a couple of weeks ago by a warranty contractor indicated that the Xbox360 has a 16% failure rate, which is more than 5x greater than the Wii and the PS3. I guess that if the Blu-ray drive adds that much more of a load onto the processor, then it would make the heat issue worse.

[diggity]

i too thought it would be easy to integrate blu ray drive into xbox but that just goes to show how much i know about software...lol. i am just hoping that the next big improvement in blu ray isn't which game console does what, but for them to bring out a faster starting player. i hate waiting sooo looong just to play a dvd

cheers: dazza

[Groundbeef]

From what I am hearing, they are having a bit of a struggle getting XBOX360 to work with a bluray drive. It seems that as powerful as the XBOX360 is, it does not do well trying to handle PCM, DTHD and Dts MA lossless and AVC serperately, or together. Its seems that AVC at high bit rates(what you would find on a Disney bluray titles) causes the processing to overload and shut down the machine. Using PCM, or any of the advance lossless codecs cause the audio to skip and jump around. The XBOX360 was optimized for games, not high resolution video sources. Its processing was designed for games, not high resolution audio and video, so getting it to function like the PS3 is proving very difficult for the designers to accomplish. Beef knows more about its gaming prowess than I do, but on the video side of things, it was not design to do what they are asking it to do apparently.

Beef enters the room with a dumbfounded look on his face. Smiles for a moment, savors the compliment, then works up the nerve to comment.

I'm not really sure about the BR add-on. All that I have read indicated that they could offer a supplemental drive similar to the HD-DVD, but I haven't read information contridicting your above statement.

Perhaps it doesn't play nice with BR, but I didn't really buy it for that anyway. I've been looking for a standalone player...ya know one that doesn't play video games AND play BR movies. Kinda like a floor wax that is also a non-dairy whipped topping.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Beef enters the room with a dumbfounded look on his face. Smiles for a moment, savors the compliment, then works up the nerve to comment.

I'm not really sure about the BR add-on. All that I have read indicated that they could offer a supplemental drive similar to the HD-DVD, but I haven't read information contridicting your above statement.

Perhaps it doesn't play nice with BR, but I didn't really buy it for that anyway. I've been looking for a standalone player...ya know one that doesn't play video games AND play BR movies. Kinda like a floor wax that is also a non-dairy whipped topping.

Floor wax that is also non diary whipped topping?? Waaaahahahahahaha...LOLOL..too funny.

Well, Sony is coming out with two new players in the summer for under $500. And if this is just too cheap for you, Goldmund is coming out with a $16,500 bluray player that does everything including broadway shows.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I read roughlydrafted.com several times a week to get some perspective on much of the over-the-top punditry I slog through on some of the mainstream sites. Yeah, Dilger can be over focused at times, but he almost always has a more reasoned and researched approach. He even includes verifiable resources.

I get really tired of seeing a Web pundit say something is a "fact" then offer absolutely no support other than his say-so that said fact really exists. Certain Internet clowns make a living off inventing outrageous, unsupported "facts" that drive sensation-seeking readers to their sites. Compared to them, Dilger looks like a freakin' Rhodes Scholar. (Which I'm pretty sure he is not. )

Anyway, at the risk of sounding agreeable, I think history shows MS has made a lifestyle out of screwing its partners--a lesson Apple learned the hard way and almost didn't recover from. In addition to finally thwarting another MS subterfuge, the nice thing about the BluRay victory is the presence of standardized formats in both the hard media and soft media.

We'll have to see if Apple does anything with BluRay or not, but either way MPEG-4 and H.264 are now both the de jure and de facto standards going forward for both hard (disc) and soft (download) media, and that has to be a good thing.

With the exception of a few small details, his article was spot on to my experience over the last 5-6 years of seeing this play out from a corporate perspective. It doesn't really matter that he hates Microsoft if what he writes is factual and well accounted for.

I am personally pleased that Microsoft continues to fail over and over in getting their proprietary software in set top boxes and video players. It looks like they have failed to get Windows CE into cable set top boxes, and it looks like Tivo will beat them out there. They were successful in getting it into HD DVD, but it has now failed. Now it looks like they have a new venture, trying to dominate the search engine market. I hope Google beats the crap out of them there, and Yahoo is able to successfully rebuff Microsoft takeover plans.