HDTV Magazine: Is HD DVD or BD more consumer friendly?

[Ruined]

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles...or_blu-ray.php

They must have read my sig

[ganthc]

He does make valid points about the standardization part, and price. But he was off on the studios bit. You can't just compare titles, because it completely disregards what those titles are and whether they are popular or not. And if you are willing to just equalize it by titles, then you could say that Blu-ray has a better audio and video scoring average based on titles. After all, we aren't analyzing the titles to see how old the movies are. It doesn't work that way. The spin given on the Target and Blockbuster points are a bit hollow in my opinion.

But it's an effective argument.

[Mr. Furious]

His conclusion is excellent. Interesting read.

[rixrex]

I agree that equivalency in number of titles and disregarding what titles they are is not a useful comparison. Why would I want to buy a format that has 400 titles with 75% baloney, vs a format that has 400 titles with 75% good stuff. I'm not saying either BD or HD is 75% bad titles, but that the comparison used isn't so fabulous.

Also, I don't like the vagueries in his source material descriptions. He uses percentages from the Fall HDTV studies, and the studies are "of our membership and visitors on a periodic basis", definitely too indistinct and non-specific as to survey make-up. No use of empirical methodology and easily could be skewed all sorts of ways.

Also regarding this comment:

"Paramount got paid $150 million for HD DVD support - True, but let's not pretend money is not changing hands all over the place in this contest. It's business, and that's how business is done."

I find this to be a distasteful acceptance of graft and anti-competition trust-building. It's not how business is done in any sort of business that has to answer to regulatory agencies. It's not accepted business practice by anyone in business who is ethical and accepts competition.

Money changing hands isn't in itself indicative of graft, it could merely be payment for services or goods, yet if the intent for, and result of, the payment is to stifle competition, then this is not business, this is monopolistic and is anti-business. This writer may be a "Chief Technologist" but he's definitely not a business nor marketing analyst.

I am always amazed at the number of people who are technologically aware and intelligent, yet have not realized that both Sony and Toshiba are attempting to create de facto monopolies with their exclusivity arrangements. There should be no exclusivity agreements allowed, and the formats can then fail or succeed based upon their quality AND value to the consumer.

[Derb]

BD is simply more consumer-friendlier at the moment because it works flawlessly. If once & while BD glitched I'd say its on par with HD DVD but it hasn't.

333 BD titles watched now, NO problemo.

Ease of navigational use. In comparison who wins the battle? I can skim through countless audio tracks with the press of a button on BD. Can't do that with HD DVD. Its little things like this which make the viewing experience more pleasurable.

[ganthc]

I might add that bd+ has not given me any problems either, although Fox is the only one using it. There is a momentary spinning icon that appears when I put in the disc, and it's gone a second later. And my player hasn't bricked either. All good news, and hasn't affected me as a consumer.

[mssturgeon]

Originally Posted by rixrex

I agree that equivalency in number of titles and disregarding what titles they are is not a useful comparison. Why would I want to buy a format that has 400 titles with 75% baloney, vs a format that has 400 titles with 75% good stuff. I'm not saying either BD or HD is 75% bad titles, but that the comparison used isn't so fabulous.

I intentionally left title comparisons out because it is a highly subjective point, and not one which I can base any sort of real recommendation on.

Originally Posted by rixrex

Also, I don't like the vagueries in his source material descriptions. He uses percentages from the Fall HDTV studies, and the studies are "of our membership and visitors on a periodic basis", definitely too indistinct and non-specific as to survey make-up. No use of empirical methodology and easily could be skewed all sorts of ways.

The surveys are ongoing and data is scheduled for publication in December. the respondents from the survey come from casual site visitors, forums, etc ... so a good mix of HDTV enthusiasts.

Originally Posted by rixrex

I find this to be a distasteful acceptance of graft and anti-competition trust-building. It's not how business is done in any sort of business that has to answer to regulatory agencies ...

Why don't you do a little digging and find our why Fox and Disney support Blu-ray.

Originally Posted by rixrex

This writer may be a "Chief Technologist" but he's definitely not a business nor marketing analyst.

And I never claimed to be, but I am aware of how these relationships (on both sides) were established.


Thank you for taking the time for such a detailed reply,

- Shane Sturgeon

[Taxi]

Welcome to the forum, Shane.

I'm curious, did you find this thread via your web logs, or did somebody tip you off?

Either way, welcome.

[mssturgeon]

Originally Posted by Taxi

I'm curious, did you find this thread via your web logs, or did somebody tip you off?

Thanks. You nailed it: web logs.

- Shane

[Ruined]

Shane, I posed this message on another forum I visit, but I will post it here as well since this is the forum I regular most. So anyway, here goes.

Originally Posted by mssturgeon

It is not an objective piece. It was not meant as a standard "tech spec comparison", you can find enough of those on the 'net. I wanted to write a piece to tell those who are about to make a decision what they should care about. If my research would have pointed toward Blu-ray, I would have written the article the other way around.

Glad to answer any other questions you all might have about it.

Thanks,

- Shane Sturgeon

Shane on the topic of Consumer Friendliness & DRM with the two HD formats I think its worthwhile to investigate the capabilities of BD+ Advanced Countermeasure. According to the BDA (link:http://www.mediafanatics.net/BD-ROMSecurity.pdf), BD+ Advanced Countermeasure - which is called into action when Basic Countermeasure fails - is able to execute native code on the host process. Translated into English, this means basically it is essentially permitted in the BD spec for a BD disc/player to run a program of the studio's choosing without your permission on your player/computer.

Now, what Pioneer's reps have gone on record to describe to the public in avenues such as AVSFORUM and in interviews once this feature was exposed is not Advanced Countermeasure, but rather Basic Countermeasure. Basic Countermeasure works through virtual machine technology and hence any changes that are made are temporary and do not affect the host process. Pioneer actively chose to ignore the capabilities of Advanced Countermeasure when discussing BD+, completely leaving out the info in BDA's own BD+ security presentation.

The concern for "consumer friendliness" here is that the BDA is purposefully deceiving the public by failing to inform them of the full capabilities of BD+ Advanced Countermeasure. Instead, they are choosing to focus only on Basic Countermeasure tactics as these are much less intrusive in nature and simply ignoring the Advanced Countermeasure capabilities within the BD spec. Therefore a consumer may be exposing themselves to a security risk with BD+ unknowingly as its full capabilities have not been publically discussed by the BDA. It seems both shady and dishonest for BDA members to continue to discuss Basic Countermeasure while ignoring the bigger security & privacy concerns of Advanced Countermeasure... I mean, I could think of a million ways Advanced Countermeasure could be used maliciously not only by hackers but also studios! It would give them the perfect backdoor to run whatever software they please on your computer - it just seems like another "Sony Rootkit" fiasco waiting to happen. IMO the consumer should be more informed about BD+ Advanced Countermeasure and the BDA should be more upfront about ALL of its capabilities both now and in the future. It would be very useful to the consumer if someone were to do an expose on this specific facet of the BD+ DRM technology and get some real concrete data on it from the primary people involved in its creation & deployment (Sony, Fox, and Pansonic - who have now sold the technology to Macrovision). Thanks for the reply, and thanks for the fantastic article.

[elfman]

Originally Posted by rixrex

There should be no exclusivity agreements allowed, and the formats can then fail or succeed based upon their quality AND value to the consumer.

Good points, but when you say "no exclusivity agreements allowed" then you are having government get more into business. If a movie studio wants, for whatever reason, to only produce on one format, then they have that right. If they are paid to, then it make sense for their business, and is the right choice for them. This is not a classic monopolistic threat. This is a standards battle.

Not you, but I've seen so many Sony fans argue about the Paramount deal and they so easily ignore the exclusive BR studios. It's on both sides.

[rixrex]

Originally Posted by elfman

Good points, but when you say "no exclusivity agreements allowed" then you are having government get more into business. If a movie studio wants, for whatever reason, to only produce on one format, then they have that right. If they are paid to, then it make sense for their business, and is the right choice for them. This is not a classic monopolistic threat. This is a standards battle.

Not you, but I've seen so many Sony fans argue about the Paramount deal and they so easily ignore the exclusive BR studios. It's on both sides.

Government has always gotten involved in business when business operated detrimentally to the overall national public interest, as in when business established oligarchies, trusts and monopolies. I fully support government involvement in trust-busting and monopoly-breaking, and in allowing a free-market system to encourage competition.

Exclusivity agreements are in fact classic examples of trust-building in order to create a monopolistic structure and here's why. A trust, as used here in describing anti-competitive behavior, is an organization of corporations and/or companies that are in basic agreement to control the discovery, licensing, production, manufacturing, distribution and sale of any given product, when that same product is unavailable by any other means.

In this case the discovery and product is any particular individual motion picture presented for home viewing. At this point, the term product shall refer to the motion picture, not any hardware player. The licensing of this product is done by the responsible motion picture studio and is protected by US copyright law, and the production and manufacturing is also done by the studio or by contracted manufacturers. Up to this point, all is fine.

The distribution and sale of the particular motion picture then becomes restrictive by any sort of agreement that the production company will exclusively present the product on one particular home viewing format to the exclusion of any other available format. The intent of this type of trust is to create a monopoly that forces a home viewer to purchase one particular company's format player in order to view the product, and essentially gives control of the product to the player manufacturer who should not have control of such product. This is in fact a classic example of trust-building.

In the past, production studios would present the film product on any format for home viewing that was available and that they felt would bring profit, and did not concern themselves with the manufacturer of the format player. This is a true free-market system which would allow for the hardware to succeed or fail on its own merits.

Sony had a hard lesson with Beta, which much of was their own fault, and now they want to reduce the possibility of that happening again, and so they devised a marketing strategy that basically tries to force-feed the general public their format by restricting product and retail outlets in their favor. Toshiba took this playbook and decided to use it as well.

What appears to the general public to be some sort of competition is in fact not a competition at all, but a battle between two factions that now strive to have absolute control over the home viewing market from top to bottom, thanks to Sony's methods. If Sony thinks BD can suceed on its own merits, why push exclusive product? And the same query to Toshiba and HD, except that they have become involved as reactionaries more than as instigators.

For a free-market and competition to exist, Sony should be made to split control or divest itself of its motion picture studio, and the exclusivity agreements should be made illegal, and the payments to create such arrangements should be called what they really are: PAYOLA, and also GRAFT, and should also be illegal.

This would allow true competitive forces to prevail and the production studios could be free without obligation to produce in only one format or the other, or both if they wish, and then "they have that right", as you so stated, without encumberment. That is the significant difference between a true free-market and what you describe as being free-market, which is actually just freedom to accept graft, payoffs, and mafia-styled influences.

And if this were indeed merely a "standards battle", then you would have seen the government step in a long time ago and set a prescribed "standard".

[rixrex]

rixrex:
I agree that equivalency in number of titles and disregarding what titles they are is not a useful comparison. Why would I want to buy a format that has 400 titles with 75% baloney, vs a format that has 400 titles with 75% good stuff. I'm not saying either BD or HD is 75% bad titles, but that the comparison used isn't so fabulous.

mssturgeon:
I intentionally left title comparisons out because it is a highly subjective point, and not one which I can base any sort of real recommendation on.

However, you used title volume comparisons as counterpoint to the statement that Blue-Ray had more studio support, in order to lend support to your conclusions about HD. If it is such a highly subjective point, as I agree, then the number of titles comparison is a moot issue and practically useless as a buttress one way or the other.

rixrex:
Also, I don't like the vagueries in his source material descriptions. He uses percentages from the Fall HDTV studies, and the studies are "of our membership and visitors on a periodic basis", definitely too indistinct and non-specific as to survey make-up. No use of empirical methodology and easily could be skewed all sorts of ways.

mssturgeon:
The surveys are ongoing and data is scheduled for publication in December. the respondents from the survey come from casual site visitors, forums, etc ... so a good mix of HDTV enthusiasts.

And it still is somewhat less than reliable since it lacks the type of empirical methodology that would make it a valuable survey useful for consideration. That might be a bit harsh as it would be considered anecdotal information, and useful in the same way one might ask a knowledgable friend for their opinion on a purchase. I would agree that it is most likely a good mix of HDTV enthusiasts ...but only those who were casual site visitors and forum members, and whatever etc. means.

rixrex:
I find this to be a distasteful acceptance of graft and anti-competition trust-building. It's not how business is done in any sort of business that has to answer to regulatory agencies ...

mssturgeon:
Why don't you do a little digging and find our why Fox and Disney support Blu-ray.

I don't need to, I already know, and I still find it just as distasteful. You are mistakenly assuming that I am a BD supporter. I am not, as others on this forum already know.

rixrex:
This writer may be a "Chief Technologist" but he's definitely not a business nor marketing analyst.

mssturgeon:
And I never claimed to be, but I am aware of how these relationships (on both sides) were established.

Well, when you wrote, "Paramount got paid $150 million for HD DVD support - True, but let's not pretend money is not changing hands all over the place in this contest. It's business, and that's how business is done," I felt that you essentially attempted to set yourself up as such. However, I should have realized the statement is a cliche and simplistic, and meant for effect, and I will concede that it does not imply business nor marketing expertise, and so this is my error.

mssturgeon:
Thank you for taking the time for such a detailed reply,

You're welcome, and the same to the messenger as well. Thanks for coming to the board and making yourself available for comments, and willing to include yourself in some give and take..

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by ganthc

He does make valid points about the standardization part, and price.

How many different HD DVD player manufacturers produce players not based on the Toshiba unit? How about Blu-Ray players not based on a Sony unit? If the players are based on the same unit, it's very easy to standardize... sort of like having a heterogeneous Windows XP SP2 network.

I think it's still too early for these kinds of conclusions to be drawn since both sides are still introducing new format features to the marketplace.

Peace...

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

How many different HD DVD player manufacturers produce players not based on the Toshiba unit? How about Blu-Ray players not based on a Sony unit? If the players are based on the same unit, it's very easy to standardize... sort of like having a heterogeneous Windows XP SP2 network.

I think it's still too early for these kinds of conclusions to be drawn since both sides are still introducing new format features to the marketplace.

Peace...

No, I think there is a difference on standardization. The hd-dvd spec was finalized so that even the hd-a1 can play all the extra features fluff and can even do TrueHD. Once blu-ray puts out profile 1.1 players, they will be roughly the same thing, but for now, hd-dvd has a consistent spec for its players.

You do have a point that there is a difference between hd-dvd just having Toshiba, and blu-ray having multiple CE's, but to this point, all bd players have not had the internal components to be 1.1 profile compliant. With a year and a half into the format, it certainly IS an advantage for hd-dvd.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

No, I think there is a difference on standardization. The hd-dvd spec was finalized so that even the hd-a1 can play all the extra features fluff and can even do TrueHD. Once blu-ray puts out profile 1.1 players, they will be roughly the same thing, but for now, hd-dvd has a consistent spec for its players.

You do have a point that there is a difference between hd-dvd just having Toshiba, and blu-ray having multiple CE's, but to this point, all bd players have not had the internal components to be 1.1 profile compliant. With a year and a half into the format, it certainly IS an advantage for hd-dvd.

1.1 is not the magic number for BD. It is an intermediate step between 1.0 and 2.0/BD-Live.

BD-Live/Profile 2.0 is basically equivalent to what HD DVD was at launch, and is the final spec.

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Ruined

1.1 is not the magic number for BD. It is an intermediate step between 1.0 and 2.0/BD-Live.

BD-Live/Profile 2.0 is basically equivalent to what HD DVD was at launch, and is the final spec.

That's true, but 1.1 players will be sufficient for most. 2.0 just adds the web content stuff, right? I'm curious whether the ps3 is capable of being upgraded all the way to 2.0 profile.

[Derb]

Originally Posted by ganthc

That's true, but 1.1 players will be sufficient for most. 2.0 just adds the web content stuff, right? I'm curious whether the ps3 is capable of being upgraded all the way to 2.0 profile.

Its the only system out (I can think of) currently with WEB support. I imagine the firmware from 1.1P to 2.0P would be a small one. Before the PS3 was even released, I'm sure Sony had these future spec profiles in mind. We'll see. Unfortunately dts-HD MA isn't high on the priorty list.

[sub780lime]

Originally Posted by ganthc

That's true, but 1.1 players will be sufficient for most. 2.0 just adds the web content stuff, right? I'm curious whether the ps3 is capable of being upgraded all the way to 2.0 profile.

It is true that its just adding the web content, but its still not standard across the board. There will still be BD's out their with different profiles.

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by sub780lime

It is true that its just adding the web content, but its still not standard across the board. There will still be BD's out their with different profiles.

The key thing is that all bd players will play movies, though we were led to believe by some that it wouldn't be the case.

[sub780lime]

Originally Posted by ganthc

The key thing is that all bd players will play movies, though we were led to believe by some that it wouldn't be the case.

true, but I just can't consider that fully functional then. Personally, I don't care, I would buy a current gen player, because something like web content isnt a big deal to me.