f13.net

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070618/blockbuster_blu_ray.html?.v=3 (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070618/blockbuster_blu_ray.html?.v=3)

Well maybe it's just a black eye.

That is a pretty big blow. I'm still pulling for HD-DVD but it's reactionary because of how Sony is pimping Blu-ray. We'll see what happens. I figure if Star Wars or LOTR or Star Trek gets released on Blu-ray that'll really signal the end.

Fox (Star Wars) is Blu-Ray only, though if Lucas says he wants it in both formats I doubt they would say no to him. Paramount (Star Trek) and New Line (LotR) support both.

I was surprised to not see a "30th Anniversary Edition" SW DVD package come out on one of the HD formats this year, despite Lucas' earlier promise of "No more DVD Packages."    Then again, there's still 6 months left, and plenty of time to announce of X-mas.

Star Trek hasn't done a multi-movie package in a while either, have they?  The last one I recall seeing was the VHS box set with the Enterprise-A on the spines.

Anywho, back on topic, yeah this is a VERY big blow for HD-DVD.  Particularly when Blockbuster cites that 70% of their rental market was Blu-Ray anyway, it looks like Sony finally came out a winner on a format.  Even a blind squirrel, etc, etc.  :-D

HD-DVD smacked of a Divx rehash to me from the beginning.

Slightly faster to release.

Format with less capacity.

Too much reliance on one company (HD-DVD = Microsoft, Divx = Disney) to drive sales of product.

While the Porn industry may be fans of HD DVD, they probably don't make that much of their money from physical media sales anymore as the interweb is "pr0n on demand". So the ace that JVC had up their sleeve with VHS is pretty much gone.

Interesting, many figured Blu-Ray would lose once they gave the "no-porn" directive.  Hell, it killed Betamax.

Though from what I have heard hi-def porn is more disturbing than enjoyable..

I kinda think a lot of people were thinking the same thing.

Just saw a quick CNBC segment about this as I was flipping channels.

One of the 2 "experts" was a Toshiba advisor who was trying to spin the Blockbuster thing as a win for HD-DVD because HD-DVD owners buy their product not rent, and that the PS3 owners were the sole reason people were renting more because playstation owners are "renters not buyers".

Not once did he mention that HD-DVD has the same drawback in adoption at this moment as Blu-Ray. It is largely driven by a console, the 360.

He also said that HD DVD was technologically superior because it mandates all players have internet connectivity, and Sony doesn't.

Of course, CNBC is part of Universal. And Universal is the only HDDVD only studio....so /shrug

Interesting article from last week about the HD-DVD numbers.

http://www.ultimateavmag.com/news/61407hddvd/

Microsoft isn't the one pushing HD-DVD on the hardware side -- it's Toshiba and HP.

HP is one of the Blu-Ray backing companies, though they use the term "High-definition DVD" or "HD-DVD" to discuss both HDDVD and BluRay in articles on their site which is mildly confusing.

While technically HP is still "supporting" Blu-Ray they are including HD-DVD drives in their computers now, not Blu-Ray drives, that's why I mentioned them. They also have a really cheap external HD-DVD drive too (Fry's was offering a $50 rebate on the $180 drive making it $130).

Not to argue, but the first computer I got when I went to their site and clicked on home PC's has a combo drive in it that Writes/Reads Blu-ray and reads HDDVD.  /shrug

Regardless, the format war has little to do with what kind of drive people put in their home machines as most people still watch movies on their TV which is not connected to their computer. In a couple years multiformat drives will be the most commonly purchased ones anyway as the decoder chips are already available. It is just like how the whole DVD+/-/=/RWX war finally came down to multi-format drives becoming the norm.

Interesting, I guess they've seen the writing on the wall and are switching back.

BTW, the current gen of those blue laser "combo" drives suck, unless all you really care about is the Blu-Ray support and only watch HD-DVDs once in a blue moon or so. On the HD-DVD side they don't support the HD-DVD UI meaning all you can do is watch the movie and navigate to chapters and that's about it, which is also why those drives don't have an HD-DVD logo on them (since they don't support the HD-DVD spec).

It's HP.  If you buy one of their machines you get what you deserve. :-P

Its doom is near certain now… (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/dc409afa-bd75-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fdc409afa-bd75-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fdaringfireball.net%2F&nclick_check=1)

Yep. HDDVD is fucked.

Where's that old thread? I couldn't find it, I wanna see how I described the fight. And then I want to use the "thisguy.jpg" macro.

You mean this guy?

(http://www.basetree.com/thumbs/113thisguy.jpg)

I love that guy.

Excellent, should be easier now to talk my wife into getting a PS3.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8873.0

Ohhhh yes.

Now that feels good.

It feels like....

victory.

I like how, at the end there, I said:

"Games decide the systems? Movies might actually decide the format for once."

Oh god it tastes so good.

:-D

I like the way you think!!  Also, I can rent Blu-Ray movies now too.

 :drill:

I honestly never cared which format wins I just want one or the other to die in a fire so this format war can be over and done with.

I'm surprised. I was pretty sure it would go to dual format like the whole +R/-R crap did with CD/DVD. I just checked over at newegg and there are no hd-dvd players or burners, but several blu-ray. Still a little bit out from affordable (imo) at $150+ for the player and several hundred bucks for the burners. I figure maybe next xmas we might jump into bluray.

Format war essentially over.

And about time too. I didn't particularly care which side won, as long as someone did. I've got players for both, and discs for both, but I have a LD player too, so I don't think I count as average.

Now we have to hope Toshiba doesn't try to hang on tooth and claw, and drag this thing out until both formats die.

Well, with the studios picking a side, it won't matter what Toshiba does.  And I wouldn't make too large of an investment either way - as soon as the studios can go 100% digital download they will do so.

Paramount was paid $150 million to use HD DVD for two years. That ends this year. Then they go Blu Ray and it is game over.

I care not for either format… …unless I plop down for PS3 (or XBOX 360)…

…I have a 'N' router now that can serve up HD video streams, all that it is needed is a new TV (have HDTV but been unable to get resolution > 800x600 on it from computer - it should do 720p or 1080i but I haven't got the right cables yet I guess and/or it's an almost 10 year old rear projection TV anyway…)…

…screw discs… …wireless transmission from computer in den, controlled by remote from bought stuff on iTunes, ripped DVDs, video podcasts and downloaded movies…

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Theoretically this may be true but the real world says, 'nuh-uh'.

Xbox executive probably speaking out of turn. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080108/tc_nm/show_xbox_dc_1)  If he still has a job tomorrow I assume he will recant.

Wrong. Have tested it already, though you need to have a "N" card too… …I've got a new N airport extreme and it streams HD to MBP in seamless fashion… …maybe XP/Vista hasn't caught up yet, but it works in OS X…

You don't even need N to stream HD material.

For high-quality HD stuff you are looking at around 15 - 20 Mbps bandwidth usage if you are using MPEG-2, less if you are using one of the more efficient codecs like H.264.

Heh.  Looks like Sony decided to lose this game generation in order to win the "Video Format Nobody Really Fucking Wants" war.

Clever!

I'm happy with my 100 dollar Samsung 1080p upscaling DVD player with HDMI cable on my 32" Sharp Aquos.

Maybe I will get a Blu Ray when they hit 200 bucks.

Which means it won't be a PS3, the system of dick.  (The only halfway decent version was the original 600 dollar one with Backwards Compatibility.  54 PS2 titles aint goin to waste!)

My main reason for going DVD in 98 was due to the extras, not the improved picture.  (Plus I am a total whore for Aliens.  It had just come out with the Director's Cut version on DVD.)

Anime with choice of subs or dubs, commentary tracks and special features.  That's why I went DVD. I was already buying stuff on VHS.

Blu Ray is just a prettier version of what we already have.  For 4-5 times the price of a DVD player and an increase in disk prices.

Blu Ray and HD DVD are what Bose is to audio.  Overly pricey shit that is only marginally better than what I already have.

Dammit, my iMac is my only retardo price item I am a whore of!  I SHALL NOT BE WHORE ANY FURTHER.

While I'll be steadfast in not hopping on Blu-Ray (or HDDVD) train, one must acknowledge that the formats look spectacular, albeit, I would say, true, not much difference on TVs < 35 inches. But on a big screen (doesn't everybody have >50 inch television in the living/family room?), the difference is indeed noticeable…

…but again, I want the ultimate lazy man setup, no discs, have it all stored in bits and accessible throughout property via search box on my iPhone like remote…

You should see the discussions about this topic in an AV forum I frequent.  Much wailing and gnashing of teeth, especially by the "pooray" contingent.  [Yes there are people that call Bluray pooray.  It is the intardnet].  There are even threads of people selling HD players and discs.  Sucks to be an early adopter.

But honestly, aside from Bluray region coding, who cares which format wins.  I'm viewing the whole thing the same way I did DVD.  Once the video store or local retailer has more high def movies than DVDs I'll buy a player.  Until then they can piss right off; especially when new release Bluray/HD-DVD movies in Australian are $A35-40.  

Blu-Ray has america and asia in the same region.

Which means I will never complain about region coding.

Also, the next PS3 firmware update will let you put a blu-ray disc in, it will convert it to h.264, and you load it onto your memory stick for the PSP. It encodes at 480x272. Perfect awesome.

That is cool (the region coding).

But I can convert to that H.264 resolution (for iPhone, 480x320) right now from standard DVD disc and HandBrake.

Apparently Sony's media arm forgot to tell the PS division that that's illegal (according to them). Better take advantage of that feature while it's still available.

My first DVD player was around $450, and the discs were still $25-30 or so at the time.  DVDs were a small portion of the video store.  And it was still worth it.

I hear people complain that the picture quality of HD isn't enough better than DVD to be worth it.  I declare that to be bullshit.

I *do* think that a significant portion of the population is ignorant or stupid enough to think that as long as the image fills up their widescreen, then it must be HD.  (Not saying this is you or anything.)

Screenies comparing BR LotR to DVD LotR: http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html

There certainly is a difference, but not one I'm willing to pay any sort of premium for. Between the picture moving and my ass being on the couch, I can't imagine a slightly improved picture is going to improve my enjoyment of a move.

While there is a difference to be sure, is that counting what an upscaled player can do or just standard display?

Even if it is, its not worth another 400 bucks to get.  Honestly looking at the difference its not even something I would do for 200.  Probably 100 tops, or as mentioned, when they stop making regular DVDs.
(Which given their popularity, install base, and sheer importance to the studios, is probably a few years out even with the recent slowdown of DVD sales.  Though I expect Sony to be the first to start phasing out regular DVDs in some fashion within 12 months.)

I'll start paying attention when the prices aren't so freaking ridiculous. I can get a dvd for $10-$15, and yet they want $25-35 for a blu-ray? Try bringing that price down from "retarded nutsoland" and into more reasonable figures and I'll think about switching my collection and buying the exact same movie a second time.

To be honest that's about what DVDs were like when they first came out. When I got my first piece of shit RCA DVD player, I picked up Ghostbusters and it was something like $20-25 if I recall.

I got Live Free or Die Hard in Blu-Ray and it's pretty fucking nice. The upscaling the PS3 does on regular DVDs however is slick too and looks barely a couple notches worse.

I'm not sure what you're asking; if your player doesn't upscale it, your TV will.  It's more a question of how *good* your scaler is.

Good scaling still =/= HD quality; it just makes standard definition not suck on a high-def display.

The thing with porn is that it's irrelevent in the hi-def stakes.

They made a difference in VHS/Betamax because it was the first time people could watch that stuff in the privacy of their own homes instead of a disgusting wanksalot theatre. These days, the difference isn't downloads as many keep saying, it's because everyone has DVD players anyway, don't we?

So unless people think that cinephile porn viewers who must absolutely have their jacking in the best picture quality were going to drive the market in the same way that joe sixpack who just wanted to watch Debbie Does Dallas at home...

I've never understood the fascination with upscaling. Upscaling doesn't automatically add missing bits back to the picture, the best it can do is use some goofy algorithm to make a best guess.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are not very different tech wise, and they both use the same encodings/codecs, which is the most important part anyway.

As far as Blue-Ray/HD-DVD vs DVD, the value to upgrade is not there because:

1. People have already bought the same movie on DVD twice.
2. VHS to DVD was a huge step up in picture quality, analog to digital, that would also not wear over time.
3. DVD introduced features like menus, frame advance, decent FF/RR, subtitles, etc that VHS could not support.
4. DVDs are smaller and easier to store than VHS tapes.

The only thing HD-DVD/Blu-Ray adds to the equation is better picture quality, whereas better picture quality was only one part of what made DVD attractive. DVD was a fundamentally different technology. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray is not.

That's the truth, though I guess one other minor addition is better interactivity features. I believe HD-DVD offers advanced scripting capabilities for dvd authoring, while Blu-Ray offers, what amounts to, full on Java apps (BD-J). There could be some added value because of all of that in the future.

HD formats also have better sound if you have the equipment to decode it.

Making the switch to DVD from VHS was more than just about the picture quality though.  What really got me into DVD were all the deleted scenes and alternate endings and shit.  It was like finding hidden treasure or something to see parts of movies that I loved that I had never seen before.  The switch to blu-ray just isn't as exciting in that respect.  Of course it doesn't help that DVD's have been milking the deleted scene thing in recent years either, especially with the whole "20 mintues of deleted and extended scenes" (where each extended scene is a five minute section of dialogue extended to five and half minutes with a couple of pointless lines reinserted).

Nowadays I just don't give a damn anymore.  Just give me a movie with watchable picture quality, and fuck the extras.

Players aren't that expensive, and it's not like they don't work with your existing collection.  You don't *have* to replace all your current DVDs with hi-def versions. If you want to upgrade some of your discs, that's great, but nothing forces you to.  I certainly won't replace everything; especially the older stuff that wasn't high-quality film to begin with.

In my own case, I prefer DVDs on my Panasonic DVR at 480p via the TV's component input, with the TV doing the scaling.  Looks comparable to my old Sony CRT quality-wise.

For me, it was ALWAYS about the picture quality (well, that, and not rewinding...)  I watch the deleted scenes or outtakes once if they're there, then forget about them.  Everything else I ignore; I've got a lot of "extras" discs that have never even been inserted into the player.

After a couple days of owning that old player, I couldn't stand to watch fuzzy old VHS anymore.  I'm almost in the same boat with HD vs. SD, except that Time Warner's shitty shitty shit HD lineup forces me to watch some channels in standard.  I catch myself watching shows I'd never bother to watch except that I just enjoy the sharpness of the picture.

Regular DVD is still good, but it does feel "soft" to me now.

That link is NOT showing 1080p next-gen DVD, that was a 720p HD transfer of the movie done on HBO a year or so back.  The actual BR LotR can be expected to be much clearer than the HD pictures on that guy's webpage.

And even that's up for  debate (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=960826).

Filed away for response after class.

My understanding (and this is all secondhand of course) is that HD actually degrades the porn experience.  As in "I didn't need to see that scar".  It may actually be a bell curveish distribution of ideal viewing over fidelity and DVD might be the peak.

Or the butt pimples  :ye_gods:

QFT. There are many pr0n actresses (and all pr0n actors) that really really really do NOT need hi-def glory.

Sooo... because I was seeking knowledge and feeling retarded at the same time, I read all about blu-ray v hd-dvd and have concluded that blu-ray is winning the race to...  nothing.
(http://www.sspmustang.org/forums/images/smilies/bizarre/lopsided_smiley.gif)

Firesale now on!!! All betamax HD-DVD players now half off!!!  Hurry, supplies are limited! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080114/tc_nm/toshiba_hddvd_dc_1)

This got a chuckle out of me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=friS4OOcdgQ).

Oh damn, the digital bits part was brilliant.

Also, the CES bit. Hitler canceling the conference made it so... poignant.

(http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/2301/hdmarketsharejan2weeksua0.jpg)

Photo courtesy of Gizmodo

Er, what?  No doubt Blu-Ray is going to jump up in market share now, but how in the hell could Blu-Ray increase it's unit base by over 10x in a week?  Not that most charts here are, but that one cannot be real.

Edit:  Nevermind, found the original article.  It's not LTD share, that's why.

Actually. It's real.

Stores started hiding and dropping the price on HDDVD and most targets stopped carrying HDDVD the first week of the year.

I've certainly read interviews on the formats where porn performers have said that kind of thing. The girls appreciate the "vaseline lens" of VHS and even low-fi DVD more than the HD formats we're entering into.

mmmm.... boobjob scars....

Razor burn.  :uhrr:

Porn was turned into a scary frankenstein experience. I can't even watch it any more. Damn you, porn. And damn the retards who think some muscly gay guy abusing some frankenwench is somehow erotic. HD only exacerbates the disgustingness of it all. Even without scars, the odd shape of implants is a turnoff.

And when did pubic hair go away? Maintenance guy has a playboy calendar and almost every chick in it is shaved bare, except for one with a 2mm wide strip. Love your lady garden, ladies.

"I've heard of trimming the hedges, but you done scorched the earth"

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/netflix-picks-blu-ray-good-luck-renting-an-hd-dvd-soon/ (http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/netflix-picks-blu-ray-good-luck-renting-an-hd-dvd-soon/)

Just tapping in the final nails at this point of course.

I am lucky that the war between these formats and which ever wins is completely irrelevant to my life.   :oh_i_see: 

but...what good is grass if u can't ...uh...eat it?

Same :-)

But I'm also surprised at the folks who picked up HD-DVD in 2007. I haven't really followed this as closely as some, but to me, almost since inception, the HD-DVD camp has had the disadvantage. Even the big studio that was backing them had been talking about dual-format players. Not a good sign.

But that's just me. Anyone here go the HD-DVD route and want to discuss why?

I could understand it, though I've stayed out. If you already have a 360, it's the cheapest way to get HD movies.

I called Bluray back when the PS3 was announced to have it in every unit, rather than an add-on.

I don't think anyone could have really known early on. That was a big gamble Sony took.

Not only that, but supposedly at the end some studios were trying to go HD only.  They switched because Sony offered a big pile of cash, which is a loss for the consumer.  Instead of having two formats that could be used to help keep costs down, everyone must play with Sony, who in turn is eager to make up the difference in the millions they forked out to the studios.

Either way, neither format is something I care about at all.  I'm hoping to get both a 360 and HDTV soon, but not the HD-DVD addon or a PS3.  I'll get a Blu-Ray player when I can't rent new stuff on DVD, so probably in ~3 years. 

Free installed base vs an addon, or the still high price of a standalone unit? The high console price might have been risky, but MS came out at the high price point first, without an HD movie player. Lots of people have HD sets thanks to walmart. I don't see how HD-DVD had a chance, really.

Personally, I'll be getting a Bluray burner when they get affordable.

Now that it's all said and done though, I'd recommend anyone who already has an hdtv to get some kind of blu-ray player now. Might as well take advantage of that hd set, instead of relying on dvd's. There's a big difference.

I am far from convinced about long range prospects of Blu-Ray, even with its assumed ascendance in the market…

Clicking a button and downloading is just so much more convenient… …and I have stacks upon stacks of DVDs (and VHS) that collect dust, except for a few select titles…

…sure the downloaded, compressed "HD" is not as fine as Blu-Ray. But it beats cable "HD" and other "low def high def" that's trotted out to the consumer as "HD"…

I wanted something I can view in HD to use my TV set to its fullest and I already had to buy the Xbox for Mass Effect anyway. My local cable provider doesn't have HD channels yet.

I bought Children of Men, but was underwhelmed by the quality improvements to DVD. I would have been equally underwhelmed by Blueray, so I see no big loss there.

I know it gets said all the time, but not many people are willing to just settle with virtual copies of their movies. I can safely say that I know not one person, outside of the internet, that likes the idea. And even at this place, which as about as fringe as it gets with the tech savvy crowd... I don't see many who like the idea here either. Whether it be downloaded movies or downloaded games. Tell them that their downloaded movie is inferior in quality, and that just settles the deal even more.

I think NetFlix and iTunes rentals are going to dominate, maybe later than sooner (with the adjusting of some terms and price reductions…) and Blu-Ray will be the domain of videophiles.

Look at music downloads — the "virtual" market far exceeds the physical medium market now and video is going to arrive at the same endgame.

And, even in the non-virtual realm, Blu-Ray is an improvement, but not significant unless you're viewing on a large screen display. Is everyone going to be sporting 60" TVs soon?

It's an improvement on anything that is capable of a good, colorful, sharp picture. That could be a 20 inch lcd, for all I care. Just about any lcd, for that matter. Any plasma for sure.

Long-range, a physical media is just inefficient. It requires storage, it requires expensive shipping, it's just plain not an efficient way to have media delivered. Yes, 10 years out, we'll still have physical media. Hell, maybe 30 years out. But really, the future is in downloaded content that can be transported/stored on small, rewriteable media like flash drives. It's going to take time to get there, and Blu-Ray may be the bridge there, or there may be another technology. Most of the shit that comes with the physical copy (box, inserts) are superflouous anyway. So long as the rewriateable medium is reliable, eventually not enough people will give enough of a shit about having a box to make it worthwhile.

Fans of digital distribution are too close to see the forest.

If you have a decent upconverter, there is hardly any difference. I have to say I have been completely underwhelmed with High Def formats in general.

It's not even about fans of the methods, it's about the bean counters who decide how things get to you. Eventually, they just won't be able to justify physical media when the majority of their customers want some form of digital distribution. Hell, even if you had to go to a media store, order what you want and put it on a rewritable disk in the store as opposed to in your underwear at home, it's still going to be delivered digitally.

Why should a theater use film when they can just download the movie into their digital cameras? Why carry 10,000 CD's that can get stolen when you can carry a million CD's and sell them by the track without needing any physical inventory?

I'm using the PS3 (which is pretty decent at upconverting actually). I see a difference. However, I think it all depends on the tv. Naturally, I haven't viewed every tv out there, but I think hd video can be pretty underwhelming on dlp's, for instance. They're just not as crisp. I view a bd movie on an lcd or plasma and I'll make the faces out of everyone in a crowded wide pan shot, backgrounds and foregrounds are contrasted in a way that it almost gives off a 3d effect, or I see facial details in closeups that aren't there on a dvd version of the same film.

I disagree with you.  Virtual = NOT REAL.  No ownership.  People like having collections of things.  Virtual has no sense of ownership, and only lasts as long as the drive or machine doesn't conk out.  And DRM on Xbox Live Arcade games proves how dick virtual copies of things really are.  Hell, Wii VC titles.  You can't lend or share or even show off a game.

The only reason its worked with music is songs are only a buck, most people don't want the whole album so its ala carte, its usually a little cheaper for the few that do, and you can burn it to a physical disk with no hassles. (And CDRs cost less than a buck.  Not to mention its more convenient to put it on an iPod to play, or play it off the computer as a super convenient media center.  For things like TV shows, books, or videogames its not as good, and current efforts prove it to in fact gargle enormous amounts of moose jizz.

I like having a big DVD and game collection.  I dread the day my PS2 finally craps out as I will need to buy another PS2 (especially given the PS3 backcompatibility bullshit) since I LIKE playing my older games.

PDFs don't replace books.  Sure, I can get and print out almost any D&D module ever made for around 10 bucks total (paper and ink guessed as part of the total cost), but its not the same at all.  (Which is why I have hunted ebay and retro stores for deals to get most of the modules I might like to run including the entire GDQ series in color cover versions.  Or the original White Box D&D.  Not to play..  Not just to read.  But to HAVE.  Same thing with Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader books.  I want the entire line.  I can get all the books off the net, but it doesn't count, and is not the same.)

For people who like disposable entertainment and enjoy paying almost the same price yet being treated like a thief (HI STEAM.  FUCK YOU.) it will be fine and dandy.

For the rest of us, its a nightmarish vision of hell.

Casino Royale Blu-Ray on a full HD 37" (the smallest full HD available as far as I know, still a 1000€ TV) converted all my skeptic friends. It's simply unbelievable.

No upconverting can prepare you for the opening title sequence or well.. the following 2 hours.

I was unimpressed with BluRay, until that. Now I understand.

The Blu-Ray title that wowed me on first viewing was the Planet Earth documentary.  Simply stunning in HD. 

As to digital copy only distribution for movies...fuck that.  The few games I do that way are more of a matter of necessity than any other reason.  The only reason I do it for music is because overall, the music's cheap and I can fit everything onto my iPod now.  Having had a catastrophic computer failure in the past that wiped out alot of music that hadn't fit onto my old iPod, and that I couldn't re-download even though I had paid for it turned me off of ever investing a huge amount of money into something like that ever again.  At least with the few games I've purchased digitally, you're not limited to one download, ever, no matter what.  Not to mention the hoops you have to jump through for alot of iTunes stuff.  I don't want the way Apple does it to become the norm, because it's too tied up in that shit where you pay money for something but don't really own it.  I can live with it when I buy very little music overall compared to what I spend on games and music, but no way am I entrusting that much money to machine storage.  Especially considering how much storage I would need to be able to store all the games and music I  own. 

Nice avatar, Maz.

It's probably my favorite cover art/photo from his stuff, though not at the top of my list as far as the music went. 

I agree with you in general from a technophile standpoint, but this is not statistically correct. Virtual market is growing while hard media sales are declining, but hard media still makes up the vast majority of music sold. That will change, but not just net. The big problem has been that the studios thought downloads would complement hard media. They were wrong.

We're a long way off from worldwide digital distribution, but I don't think in the way most other people think of it. I think the idea of ownership of content is going to evolve out of society altogether to be replaced with on-demand content across everything. If you can get anything you want anytime you want it, why do you need to "own" the bits? We're already seeing this emerge across many entertainment sectors, but of course it'll be slowed by veteran consumers and established businesses (like those noted by Jain Zar). I'm not talking DiVX media of old, but rather a ubiquitous connection to your iTunes-like online account from which everything is streamed.

The internet is a two-way broadcast channel.

And the PS3 being a cheap Bluray player was fact last year. It is no longer the cheapest option, and was never really the sole reason people bought PS3 in the first place. No matter the marketing, it was a game console. People bought it because they liked the games (or hoped good ones would come) and then maybe because of Bluray. And at this point, the consortium can't afford for that even to be the message anymore.

The only way Bluray is going to matter at all as a mass market media is if that mass market picks it up. So the CE prices need to continue to drop (which they are) and content needs to become worth it (which is a longer way out). DVDs only really hit their stride 6 years ago.

I had the 360 so the add-on unit was cheaper and it didn't cost me an extra HDMI connection which was important because my AV receiver was limited on those.

Bitten by the early adopter syndrome again.  Anyone want to buy a 3DO?

http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=61967&hl= (http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=61967&hl=)

This is a well thought out discussion around what happens with no HD-DVD.  Yes, it's from a AV forum so take some of with a grain of salt but all in all a pretty good summary of these arguments;
- “If Blu-Ray Prevails Sony will Have a Monopoly”
- “If BD Becomes the Sole Format Prices Will Rise As They Screw the Consumer”
- “Two Formats can Co-exist and is beneficial to the consumer”
- Region Coding
- Disc Capacity/Bit Rate
- Market Share

In the same way Philips has a monopoly on CDs? Oh wait...


In the same way CD or DVD Prices have risen after it became the sole format? Oh wait...


No they can't and it is never beneficial to either the customer or the manufacturer.

If you have two formats, studios either have to release on both formats at once, which adds to the cost of manufacturing and screws over the stores which have to free twice the shelf space just so that you can buy the same film on either format or the movie you want is half of the time not released in that format that your player understands and you as a customer are screwed.

So manufacturers will start to sell dual-format devices so that people don't have to think about which format to buy which adds to the price of those players. Also if you need to buy dual format players just so that you can watch everything why not just agree on ONE format anyway.

Part of the lackluster sales of HD-Content and players stems from the fact that there were two competing formats. Customers don't want to do the Betamax vs. VHS choice all over again so they stayed with the "good-enough" technology already there.

Just look at HD-sales. After it was clear that HD-DVD was out, sales of BluRay Discs and players exploded. Ratatouille on BluRay was number one in the DVD(!) section of Amazaon last week (which means it was ordered more often than even the most popular DVD that week). Even PS3 sales are on a steady rise since the announcement.

People just waited it out. Two physical formats for the same content can't usually co-exist because people have to decide which player to buy to watch it/listen to it.

BTW:

"Toshiba to drop HD DVD, sources say"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ib77125d96b22e86027d0bfb0c25aa58d

Jeff, you should have read the post on the other side of that link. You're basically agreeing with what the guy says on those arguments.

Ya also gotta realize that:

• Sony does not manufacture all of the discs.
• Sony does not manufacture all of the players.
• Sony does not personally distribute all of either of these.
• Sony is not alone in the consortium.

They get to collect royalties based on which parts of the BD specification other companies follow. They don't control the end CD price.

This is just like DVD when they beat out DiVX (which unlike HD-DVD though was a dumb idea).

It will eventually matter for the same reason DVD did: "Just because". It's not like any of us really made a conscious decision there. We all just started buying dvd's because they became so ubiquitous. Now that blu-ray's main competitor is out of the way, it'll probably be the same case there.

Digital distribution might be a viable competitor one day, but I don't think they're even the same type of product at this point. In terms of ownership, and in terms of quality. And no one sure as hell has the bandwidth to either deliver or receive movies that are hd-dvd/blu-ray quality on that large of a scale yet either (I believe the average movie size is around 20gb?).

Same goes for "on demand" networks.. Having a system like what you're talking about is a long, long way yet. Cable networks aren't capable of it at least. Just the little that is being done now is already taxing them as it is.

Actually I converted because I saw a movie on DvD and was blown away by the difference between it and vhs. Combine that with better storage compared to tapes and I was sold. Same with most of my friends.

Fair enough.

But you would have converted anyways.  :wink:

Well I misunderstood the post. I thought that the summary of the post was what he listed there

That had been my impression as well. 

Probably. I like the few Blu Rays I have (all free because of my PS3 purchase) but I don't see as striking of a difference as I saw between VHS and DVD. I've been told it's because my DLP TV isn't good enough but really, if I have to upgrade to get a major difference I can wait.

Nothing wrong with DLP, no need to change, but there's a noticeable difference in pq. Guess that's the tradeoff for the benefits in size/price.

Meh, I generally get comments that my DLP has a better picture than most plasma's and pretty much all LCD's.

But there's a whole generation growing up on MP3's and downloaded movies and YouTube videos. For YOU, virtual != real. For them, in 10 years? It'll be just as real as anything else, and have just as much ownership, especially as DRM technologies improve. You are jaded by your experiences with Steam. For me, Steam is a great first step, since I can download a small executable to a new computer, login and download all the games I already own again without having to fuck about with a CD. Plus, smaller groups can sell me games at cheaper prices without having to fight through the Gamestops and the Best Buys of the world. Oh, and there's an actual back catalog of games I may have missed. And it all makes the developers feel good, because they don't have to worry about piracy as much, don't have to dick about with Safedisc or other onerous fuckup to "combat piracy."

Just like the generation that grew up with videogames have now made videogames mainstream, the generation that grows up with digital distribution and some form of DRM will make digital distribution more ubiquitious.

The same mechanism that allows you all that allows me to just order the DVD online.

Yes, and that won't change. It just won't be the most prevalent method in TEH FUTURE.

Even if there's eventually a widespread acceptance of the idea, I still don't see where all of that bandwidth is coming from. The whole idea of delivering collections upon collections of movies at a true hd bitrate and resolution would neither be more practical than portable media or cheaper than it. Not in the near future, and not even in a speculative one. Not enough to bother making any kind of argument for it now at least. Even if everyone had one of the faster types of broadband connections out at the moment, they'd still be suffering trying to download that shit (and this goes without mentioning their personal storage requirements for it). And all the while, they'd have at least 3 best buys and blockbusters within 5 miles of their homes -- it'd just be quicker and easier getting a movie that way.

Do you really think there doesn't now exist the bandwidth to do all of those things without much of a sweet? Guess what, there is. It's just that most home connections haven't been allowed or tuned to receive it, nor has it been cost-feasible to allow that sort of thing. We're talking about TEH FUTCHUR here. Think about how shitty our bandwidth was just 10 years ago and compare that to the sub-$50 6 MB DSL I have now.

I tend to agree -- fuck the discs. Fuck whether or not I can find the damn booklet with the CD key or whatever. Hell, makes getting a new PC a hell of a lot more trivial -- just boot up steam and reacquire my copies. When they finally start storing save games on Steam, then I'll be even happier. :)

Heck, I'm about to move to a fully online backup system (Anyone use Mozy?) so I can stop hassling with removeable hard drives. The future is storing all your shit on someone else's servers, and just keeping your local copies up to date on an as-needed basis.

A giant collection of HD-DVDs? Nah -- try players that just access your entire library remotely, streaming whatever you want to watch straight to you.

The future is that we're approaching a bandwidth crunch. Not some magical digital download heaven. 10 years from now, providers will probably just have finished their upgrade path to really start allowing these services with fewer bottlenecks. But it'll all be outrageously expensive getting there. And that's just the US.. The country with the most advanced network backbone out of anybody. Other countries are even more fucked, when it comes to delivering high quality content. Portable mediums are still going to be relevant for either for awhile.

I know we'll get there eventually... Everyone will have on demand access to entertainment databases like in star trek or something. I just don't see the point of talking about it right now. 5 years ahead is about all I care to talk about.

Also, there's a big fallacy in comparing it to downloadable games. Games, no matter what method you deliver them by, are the same game through and through. Right now, delivering movies in any sort of sane way requires you to reduce the bitrate and pq by a significant amount. That stuff on appletv or xbl isn't any better than dvd quality, other than having hd resolutions. And even hd broadcasts are compressed and encoded. It's not comparable to hd-dvd or blu-ray either.

And I tell you that most people don't give a shit about higher than DVD quality resolutions anyway, which is why HDTV is only now getting any kind of serious market penetration and why neither HD-DVD or Blu-Ray has made DVD obsolete. Just like MP3's don't sound as good to audiophiles but sound just fucking fantastic to most people, DVD resolution looks great to most people, who won't see ENOUGH of a difference to care.

If you listened to MP3's on good equipment, I think most people could readily hear a difference between that and vinyl or redbook cds. 

I do, however, think you did hit it the point of it though.  The audio quality in most moves seems to vary more greatly than the video quality and I've never cared much for having the state-of-the-art video.  Granted, my 27" crt could have something to do with that. 

There's only so much to the human ear can hear in audio files. The sampling rate of cd quality audio is 44.1 hz for example -- but the human ear typically can only hear in the 20hz range. And chances are, most people's speakers are shit anyways, not capable of outputting to either range.

Point being though, there's a lot of stuff you can sacrifice in audio without people noticing.

Eyes work differently. There's no point in comparing the two.

Walmart dumping Hd-dvd (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23186582/)

This could actually be the biggest blow yet. Netflix hurt but nothing like one of the nation's largest chain stores.

Edit: I had an attack of moronitis. Sorry about the broken link.

Your link es muy broken. Comes out to http://walmart%20dumping%20hddvd/

Then explain to me why most of your big internet providers talk about bandwidth throtteling because they are totally being swamped by on demand video access via iTunes and others.l

Even then, on demand access might be viable for the urban dweller (even there you'd need to get the high speed DSL access necessary) but if you are not curently living in New York, San Franscisco, Berlin, Munich or any other big western city, chances are that you won't have the amount of DSL bandwidth necessary for HD-Video on demand.

To underscore the 'bandwith outside of cities sucks'  bit;  a guildie in WoW was complaining about his ping the other day.  He lives in bumfuck Iowa and is paying $110 a month for a 'high quality' 720mbps connection.   I pay $40 for the same speed in Cincinnati.  I'll wager anywhere in the back-end of nowhere like that will ensure we're going to have physical media for a long, long, LONG time. 

We've got OTHER infrastructure to worry about that's more important than laying new 'net cables. Unless the companies feel like laying it themselves out of the goodness of their heart those remote areas are going to remain remote for a good long while. 

Because they're greedy fucks?

I mean, that's really it. They're greedy fucks. They don't want to invest a penny in infrastructure (not even replacing routers, much less renting more bandwidth or laying new cable), and as long as they can even fake a scarcity they can charge more?

Fuck, it was Enron's entire business model -- gin up a shortage, jump prices through the roof, lock people into long-term contracts, then magically "fix" the shortage for free while everyone pays three times as much and thanks you for it.

Don't forget getting the infrastructure they have now courtesy of government subsidies and handouts.

HD is taxing on the cable providers as well... It's not just an internet issue. That's not something that'll be solved overnight either.


Anyways, I'm not sure why anyone is even bothering to argue in defense of hypotheticals and "things not here"... Just because umm... Wait.. Why is it that some of you guys are against physical mediums again? That never was clear. Or are you even against them for any reason at all? Are you just stomping your foot, and being stubborn for the time being (that's OK if you are...)?

Correct me if i am wrong here, but while the US may have the most advanced backbone, i was under the impression that the vast majority of the rest of its infrastructure sucks ass, as compared to places like japan, and developing cities in places like china / india and europe (all mainly due to corporate greed, and unwillingness to expand said infrastructure while they can still milk customers for everything they have until the current one pretty much collapses)

Same argument was blathered 6-7 years ago about music and digital downloads… …and today, just look at sales charts of CD sales v. digital (even with the music industry being total fucktards and not capitalizing to even greater effect — it took Apple & iTunes / iPod success to knock them out of a slumber they still haven't come out of totally…)… …people DL'ing a movie every other night (or less, consider average consumer statistics…) isn't going to cascade a "bandwidth crunch"…

I don't remember that argument. People have been downloading things in roughly the same range before itunes showed up. The average album size is maybe 50-60mb at best. That isn't anything revolutionary. Comparing that to the jump it takes to download or deliver hd movies is a big jump. The average hd movie size is 20-25gb. That's bigger than an entire music library that most people have.

Compressed HD on iTunes is in 10-15G range for DL…

Which will be nothing on TB sized drives…

Hmm, they're up to 10-15 now? Not so bad, I guess. Used to be around 3gb movies, I believe? Like a fourth the quality of hd-dvd or blu-ray. Less even.

HOWEVER... Few people have the connects to bother with that. I mean, a fast cable connection without many hiccups would take at least 16, 17 hours to download it. I think? And that's with the connection at top speeds, without interferences, without it cutting down productivity in whatever else you're downloading/doing.

So... Taking the industry "bandwidth crunch" issue out for a sec, why the fuck does anyone want to do that anyways? Whether it was for a temporary rental or a permanent "ownership" on the hard drive, it's a waste of time compared to just getting off your ass and buying a disc -- a disc that will not only look better, but be physical, have some other fixin's, not take any space on your drive, not make you get bigger hard drives over time, and not make you wait 16 hours in a best buy line just to watch it. What the are the positives here? Why does it even have any market penetration as it is? Sounds like the marketing is simply betting on some people being stubborn asshats to me.

[edit] Oops, forgot the most important reason against it.  :evil:

"Hey Joe, do you have 3:10 to Yuma?"

"Yeah"

"Dude, can I borrow it?"

"Sorry. I'm not allowed to do that. And technically, I don't really have it. Sorry, I lied."

"..."

I estimated from this page as I don't have an Apple TV… …here is the chart showing DL time…
http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

(http://img.skitch.com/20080217-td9irak7ebjmas5a6hi35ti3ci.png)

Doesn't everybody have a >5M cable connection (at least for DL speed) now? Heck, I wasn't able to even get cable broadband until like 2002 (and no DSL at my location available either), and now I have >5M DL speed…

Oh, in case anyone missed it about the original topic.  It's dead. (http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL1637974620080216)

Yeah, not an official release, but hey damn near enough.

Well, I have a 7M service, I believe. Realistically, I download at 700 kiloBYTES per sec at best. Whatever that translates into kiloBITS, I don't know.

That's no so bad, but even that rate, a 15gb movie should take long enough to irritate the shit out of me.

7M = 7,000,000 bits/sec; 8 bits to a byte (plus 2 for tcp overhead and math laziness) = 10; 7,000,000 / 10 = 700,000 bytes; 700,000 / 1000 = 700 kilobytes = 700KB/sec

Movies aren't 15gb; look at a "fan encoding" (I'm being generous) and you'll see that movies are about 800mb. No, it's not absolute top quality but it's plenty "good enough". If someone can get a "good enough" movie on demand, without getting up out of the couch, they are going to take it. You can encode in HD, with the same drop in quality (but still more pixels) and it's only one or two gigs.

Netflicks is another good option, however that requires foresight and as we all know Americans are impulse buyers.

Dude. Those 800mb rips are lower resolution versions of dvds (which are low res 480p themselves). Hell no it isn't top quality. And if it isn't, I don't see the point in talking about it in an hd-dvd vs blu-ray thread. Top quality is the theme. Anything else is practically a different product altogether (if you want to call fan rips "product" that is), not serving the same market at all.

Thanks for clarifying the bit/byte thing though.

Oops.. Hopefully I didn't come off as too much of an asshole there..

I just want to clarify. By different market, I basically mean people with hdtv's -- who actually want to take advantage of the capabilities of their tv's. What's the point of having them if they were gonna settle for 800mb dvd rips in the first place?

Some kid sitting in fronting his computer, watching stuff he downloaded from limewire isn't really the same crowd.

I'd like to reiterate what I said on page one about content ownership. That's changing. Why would I buy multi TB drive to store movies when I can just stream them on demand? Sure you could then take it with ya, but then you're limited by the device anyway.

Lots of people will have home theater eventually, but I'm personally convinced their movies will largely stream in, for the same reason their TV shows do and will. Retailers love distributed media, and we'll get a few more years out of that here. Then that'll be exported to other countries as we continue going digital.

It's important to consider today's tech limitations. But for the above I'm going by expansion of FiOS and WiMax. Cable was a great answer to dialup, but there are pretty hard limits. At the same time, it will be consumer habitthat drives where the tech goes, and for most, even on normal size HDTVs, DVDs are fine.

This next format war felt rushed by the wrong motivations and understanding of what was really important.

I've watched Heroes and Stargate Atlantis HDTV rips, each episode is about 350mb for ~40 minutes of run time. They look great on my HDTV, and are directly from HD source.

Remember that half the people who own a HDTV can't tell the difference between a standard definition and a hi-def broadcast. The fidelity is PLENTY for your average user and I think they are on par if not better looking than 480p.

Add to the fact that you can watch any show *instantly* and you've got quite a market base. Hell, pay-per-view did VERY well, and it was a single movie! This is the exact same base market with a superior product. Pay-per-view was a great first glimpse of where the technology is going.

I think that's a half-truth.  I believe a lot of people *could* tell the difference, but aren't aware of what HD is or what they're looking at on their TV.  To many, as long as the picture fills up the screen of their HDTV then it must be HD, right?

My wife is a fairly typical unsophisticated viewer.  By that, I don't mean her choices are simple (although she does watch American Idol), I mean she's not technologically literate.  She wanted to watch "Lost" the other night, and automatically tuned in channel 4.  I took the remote, and switched it to 704, where the HD version was.  Her reaction was "Oh....wow!"  She forgets that the standard channels don't magically become HD.

Regarding 800mb (or 1-2gb) rips, sure, you can *watch* it, but that ain't my definition of "good" video.  Still scenes might just look fuzzy, but the moment you get action on the screen the picture's got to macroblock all to hell.

I agree with Poly on the viewing thing. There is as much a jump in quality from SD to HD for even standard crap like The View and some dramedies as there was from VHS to DVD. The challenge is the price point. Nobody just buys a Bluray players and connects it to their CRT. This is either a medium (TV, Bluray) or big (TV, Bluray, HD cable) investment, and then that HD cable portion is limited by the nuts who consider an "HD lineup" to be some of the networks (how the crap do I still not have freakin' NBC in HD?!). At least with DVDs, you could see the improvement on the set you already had.

Well, look at it as a case of convergence then. Bandwidth and storage space keep going up, and we're almost at a point where we can stream normal-def DVDs with very minimal loss in quality. Yes, media fidelity continues to go up, and streaming will likely be one step behind. Add some compression into the mix and it becomes very, very possible even with the bandwidth we have today. Look at things like multicast and other things that IPv6 enables, and that solves a lot of your 'peak/popular hits' bandwidth problem as well. (I know there's multicast with IPv4, but it's not as flexible and not all that workable for this)

That doesn't mean that it won't be widely available, because the general public is also (at least) one step behind as well.

It's not a product that would be marketed to HD users, it's a product that's marketed to people who hit the "pay-per-view" button on their remote to watch a movie in the evenings with the wife and kids.

As a side note:

Microsoft doesn't seem to be surprised by Toshiba's move:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/18/xbox-360-blu-ray-player-rumor-returns-right-on-cue/

"A built-in 360 with Blu-ray is also being worked on although the possibility of moving it out to retail is less clear with HD downloads on the horizon."

I'm not against physical mediums. I just think they aren't efficient and leave a lot of environmental waste and their "permanence" is illusory. Not to mention the fact that physical media can't be easily format shifted. All those laserdics I bought? I have to rebuy them on DVD if I want to watch them now, and then on Blu-Ray when I upgrade that player and on and on and on. But if I have the digital file, it's portable between formats.

I'm not saying we should remove all physical media from the retail chains, I'm just saying it should be the long-range plan of all media companies to shift away from them as the primary form of distribution.

Plus it's funny watching a bunch of, educated urban professionals argue for the removal of a medium that they don't care about, without consideration of the other segments of the population.

No one lives outside the cities anymore. That's why we have protective domes around them.  :oh_i_see:

I've never lived in a city, and my total time spent in them combined equals less than a week.
Then again, according to most tabletop gamers I don't matter because I have never been to Gen Con or Origins even though I have a disgustingly huge amount of gaming goodies.

People have a tendency to only look at their perspective and consider it the true one.  (Hopefully I have not done so in this thread.)

But as to illusion of permanence.

Well, my Turbo Duo and NES still work.  Outside of some battery backup games I can still play Ninja Gaiden 1-3 all I want.

My VHS tapes still work.  I had Macross Plus the Movie version on a couple weeks back during gamenight. 

Hell, I listened to Def Leppard on my car's tape deck this weekend!

The problem with virtual products is being charged REAL prices for it.  I mean, Phantasy Star 2 has 3 recent hardcopy releases.  All of which came with lots of other games.
It just got released today for the Wii VC (which if you have no other way to play it, should mean YOU ARE BUYING RIGHT NOW BITCHES) for around TWICE the effective price any of the other editions have.  And its totally virtual.  No manuals to read, no cover art to look at, nothing.

8 bucks for a game that was released in 1989 and whose data size is 3/4ths of a megabyte.  About a minute of an MP3 and they are charging 8 bucks for it.  And you can't lend it to a friend, you can't play it on any machine but the one you DLed it to, you can't display it on a shelf or anything else.

Hell, you can't even play it off a fucking SD card in your own machine.

And that is what virtual ownership is.  It will only get WORSE.

I don't know about the rest of the thread but you certainly did in that post.

Not to derail but is this game any good? Was it an early Sega game? I can go try to find a review for it if it was. I think I may have played it on the Sega CD back in the day.

Ok, back to arguing about virtual formats vs phyiscal formats.

BTW, I side with the physical people. I can download a pdf of a book to my laptop if I want but I would rather pay more to have the physical book in my hands. I think the same holds true of most other mediums for your average person. I think it's psychological. Like the "comfort rings" in your phone. There is no reason for you to hear a ringing sound when you call someone, but your phone makes one for you so you know your call is going through.

Old shit does sometimes work. But you better keep your old systems too. Not everyone wants to, not everyone has the room to keep those things around. My laserdisc player died a few years ago, and I'm not going to find a replacement for that without shelling out some bucks on Ebay.


I will agree with you on that. I think there ought to be a discount for virtual goods that don't come with physical media like manuals and such, and don't need to be physically shipped. The people with control over such things probably won't agree with me.


The price of the convenience of not having to dig up a Genesis (for those who don't have one anymore) and not having to search Ebay for an old cart or slum the depths of the ROM world and hope you don't get teh COMPUTER AIDS. You are incorrect about the manual by the way, VC games tend to come with instructions, you just have to read those on the screen.


The original game cost $50, while the whole CD of the song you download in MP3 format costs around $15. Apples to oranges price wise. $8 bucks is the price of convenience. The no sharing thing is a bit onerous, but completely understandable, IMO, though I wouldn't mind being able to backup my games to an SD card.

Like I said, I have no problems with virtual property distribution, especially if it's at a discount and has format flexibility and I can redownload the property if I ever lose it (a la Steam). But there will always be physical media for those who want it.

Actually PS2 cost 75 when it first came out.  (Came with a full color hintbook.)

But the same game has been available on the GBA, Dreamcast, and Playstation 2 for much less in the latter 2 cases.

6 megabits in 1990 on a cart is different than around a minute's download time.

I agree it'd be great if virtual products cost less than their real world counterparts. And it'd make sense in a pure apple to apple comparison sense.

Unfortunately, it's not apples to apples :-)

I don't have exact numbers, but the difference between hard media sales and equivalent experience downloads is ginormous. A 20$ retail purchase is going to command a much higher volume than a 5$ digital download of the exact same experience. This is why brick & mortar continues to exist. Digital distribution is considered an additional channel for the big media and other publishers, not the replacement that it is considered by some indies. It's great that it enables the latter group, because having any distribution at all is a good thing. But we're nowhere near the point where an Ubi or an EA can expect to get as much volume through Steam as they do through Walmart.

So when all elements are factored in, not getting a huge discount by having removed the middlemen process of trucks and boxes and planograms and RMO makes a lot of sense.

Having said that, digital distribution has created different ways of consuming media. Individual song sales has radically changes how things are done, for example. Expansion packs for games can continue to make money for that game whereas previously it was fire and forget box sales alone. Streaming episodes allow for more advertisement potential than just the timeslot a network would give you during the first broadcast, reruns and syndication.

But it's not an all or nothing thing.

For another few years anyway :wink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem

"The sample value is a number equal to the signal amplitude at the sampling instant. The frequency response of the digital audio file is exactly half the sampling rate (Nyquist Theorem)."

I forgot the name of the theorum when this originally came up and stumbled across it when looking for info on analog to digital transfer (still trying to hunt down a reputable place to digitize my old master reel of my band's old demo). Basically, you sample at twice what humans can perceive.

As mentioned in Sky's post you have to scan signals with at least twice the frequency of the input signal to get a good reproduction. Also its kHz not Hz. Sorry, just nitpicking

Sampling frequency is how often the sampler coverts the original signal into a bunch of bits.

Signal frequency measures the frequency of the audio signal.

Two different things.

The idea behind Nyquist's Theorum is that you need to have two sample points on a waveform for each full cycle of the waveform.  More specifically, it should be twice the highest frequency you want to record, hence going just a little beyond a normal human's range of hearing.  However, there's a lot of debate in the audio world on how inaubidle frequencies affect and color the audible ones, so HD recordings got from 96 - 192kHz in some cases.

If I remember later, I'll also throw up a sample of what a standerd 128 MP3 actually removes from the song because it's funny.

Sampling: digital reproduction of analog waveform.

A simple way to think about it is trying to trace a curve in an image manipulation program. The more points you use, the more true the resulting form.

And I fall way over on the side of inaudible spectra affecting sound, especially on the low end.

Bah, enough about audio.  Just finished a 90-hour week at our annual four-day jazz festival, and for the next few days I will *not* be listening to any music of any genre.

However, to relax yesterday I picked up a blu-ray this weekend.  It's only the Sony 300 model (there was nothing else in town, and I didn't want to wait a couple weeks to get a better unit) but it still made Order of the Phoenix and Ratatouille damn pretty.

Now to get back to the store and pick up a few more.  I bought the aforementioned discs for the wife and kid, now I need something violent and explosion-y for me  :grin:

There really aren't a lot of explosion-y action films being made these days. Lots of choices from the past, but as a new blu-ray owner, I wouldn't recommend them as "demo" type of movies, if you know what I mean. None of them were filmed with any of this in mind (that being said, they still look good).

There's like one option: Live Free or Die Hard. I love this flick myself. Comes with some decent extras too, even a little Java game (still pretty rare).

Casino Royale is tame on the explosions, but still a good one to have. Pretty slim on the extras.

Pan's Labyrinth... Not typical action either, but you should get it. It's a good disc overall.

I understand what you mean; the HD transfer of the original Die Hard doesn't add much--mediocre film stock to start with, probably.  Ratatouille makes a good "demo"; the CG animated stuff flows particularly well with the 120hz panel on my LCD.

Speaking of the "Die Hard" series, I have Live Free on SD, I like it I'm not sure yet whether I want to buy the HD version.  Maybe from the used section.

Pan's Labyrinth I've seen but don't have, I'm not sure I'd watch it enough to be worth buying.  Probably just rent it again.

Casino Royale I'm sure I'll buy; my wife didn't think much of Craig as Bond, but I liked it and she doesn't have to watch it if she doesn't want anyways.

Riiiise! :dead_horse:

Here's something scary for the 'winning' format (http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10145&Itemid=2):


That "won" the format war? A bunch of Playstation diehards buying a console on a dream is almost total installed base for the next gen format?

Thread wants to be changed to MEDIA Doooomed! Doooomed I say (well, he didn't say, but I say  :grin:)

Gotta start somewhere, I guess. Every format does.

Not sure why people who own a playstation have to be "diehards" though. I'm a gamer, but yet, I use the PS3 as a blu-ray player more than I do for games. I'm sure I'm not alone on that. Addtionally, some people simply bought it as a blu-ray player. i.e. they're not gamers.

Neither of those two categories of playstation owner are "diehard".


Also, people need to stop mentioning upscaled dvd's in these articles.

DVD didn't get popular til the PS2 and The Matrix.

Why does the PS3 driving the format shock ANYBODY?

The PS3 is also the _only_ futureproof blu-ray player. Helps that the 40GB PS3 is the cheapest BD player on the market (for the hardware).

^^ What he said about the cheap part.

People will buy the cheapest solution out there.  The majority of people also see no fucking reason to buy ALL of their movies AGAIN (probably for a 3rd time in most cases.) since DVD "is just fine."  It's only early adopters, videophiles and hardcore geeks right now, and for the next 3-5 years.

Fuck, the majority have only JUST started getting around to buying an HDTV in the last year, and you still have a good portion of people who haven't yet or won't ever buy one. Particularly not with the cost of food and gas being more important than "Oh, my TV isn't new enough."

I'm no geldon, listen to me when I doomcast. The format war was basically over when MS announced HD-DVD as an add-on. If they had put HD-DVD drives in the 360, look at the massive install base they'd have. Meanwhile, not only does everyone who has a PS3 because they're playstation fans have a bluray player (whether or not they have an hdtv!), it's a relatively cheap entry point.

But then... If MS had included a hd-dvd player, then it would have been just as expensive as the ps3 (and possibly more expensive, and for a longer time, since they didn't have any competition to adjust their prices against). So it make sense why they didn't do it. It was crazy enough that Sony did.

I just bought a PS3 to use as a bluray player.  Sales guy wanted to know what games or movies I wanted.  When I told him none, he looked at me like I had two heads.

Thank god for Zip.ca.

No HDMI cable in the box though, wtf.  Had to buy one on bluejeanscable.com, now I get to wait for the postman...

Well, there's MS's involvement with HD-DVD format vs Sony with BluRay.

I'm not talking about the console war, I'm talking about the format war. MS may have gained the early lead in the console war, but their move handed the format war to Sony.

And in the long run, maybe the second place for console war since a dual-use device is more attractive than single-use.

The xbox was my DVD player for a couple years.

Mine still is.

It turns out having a hard drive lets you do some pretty awesome things as a DVD player. . like, say, remembering where you were even if you take the disc out.

Hmm, where to start!

I know you're talking about the format war, but Microsoft is absolutely determined to win the console war even more. So it has to be mentioned. Their strategy of not including hd-dvd drives makes plenty sense to me in that light.

That isn't to say that they don't care about a format war. Microsoft is in it...Or at least, wants to be in it. Just in a different way. They might have been partners in the development of HD-DVD, but really, they never gave a shit. They never really pushed it or tried to market it. And as stated above, didn't care about it enough to push it through the X-Box. It was more of a partnership of convenience. A convenience that at the very least held off PS3 adoption for a bit, and frustrated the high definition media market for a while as well (i.e. blu-ray vs hd-dvd). They actually managed to bullshit people into thinking that hd-dvd was ever competitive. Good enough investment for them.

But... As I said, they're still interested in the format war. But it's through IP-TV. Even Bill Gates comes out of his shell to talk about it...Something which he never really did much with hd-dvd. So that shows where the real interest was all along.

Umm.. Maybe I'm getting a little convoluted here. The point I'm trying to make though is that 1) they didn't give a shit about hd-dvd and 2) the little effort they did put into it was merely to frustrate it's competition. Just having the presence of hd-dvd out there (even if it wasn't tied into the xbox) was probably worth the investment to them just because it stymied blu-ray adoption a bit (and helped them sell more x-boxes, by virtue of them being released earlier, and being cheaper).

They didn't care to win any kind of format war between the two from the get-go. What they do want to win is a console war, and through that, setting up a foundation for iptv down the road.

[edit] Of course, this is all assuming that Bill Gates is still the evil mastermind genius that he used to be.

Plans within plans.

Our true enemy has yet to reveal himself.

:awesome_for_real:

TLDR version:

Microsoft is still in the format war.  However; the format is Physical vs Digital, not something as mundane as HD-DVD vs BluRay.

Thank you, sir.  :-)

Microsoft will never win the console war. Despite me talking about Japan not being anywhere near as important as they were before, Squeenix, Konami, and Capcom are still Japanese companies first. And if push comes to shove and Microsoft starts making demands - even with moneyz - they'll choose Sony over them as the next-gen competitor every time.

And in the end, those 3 companies still have the best selling games over there and are making huge inroads in Europe and America (specifically speaking to MGS, FF, RE, DQ, and Monster Hunter).

Well... I certainly don't want to see them win, as you know. I think it's still too early to tell though. A year ago, I would have said yeah. Now I don't know. Not to say that Sony is kicking ass or anything, but they're doing better than I thought they would. That blu-ray is finally the "thing" to get helps too. I see more and more people talking about that as a big selling point.

As for the iptv thing, it works like on demand. People love that shit. On the flipside, a lot of people don't even know about that shit. Not unless it's staring them right in the face.

Additionally... On Demand works well as a side feature to regular broadcasting. IPTV is a total paradigm shift. Programming is entirely centered around the idea. Not sure if people would really be down with that or not. Also, the bandwidth requirements for it to ever deliver the quality of a blu-ray disc are not going to be available to consumers on a large scale anytime soon -- so, it's not going to be as a feature rich as well.

"TLDR" version: They still have their work cut out for them as far as consoles go. Even for their next iteration of the X-Box (which, I imagine, will be competing against the PS3 as well). Secondly, IPTV has more things going against it than for it.

Well no, but mostly because the Wii has pretty much already won this round (accept it).  Besides that of all those franchises you mention that are making huge inroads into NA and Europe, only one (MGS) actually has a game releasing on a console any time soon, one is multi-console, and two of them don't have any PS3 releases planned for them at all.

I don't even think the Wii as being in the console "war" we're talking about to begin with.

"TLDR" version: Apples and Oranges.

To be fair, the discussion wasn't really about the console war to begin with except in relation to the effect it had on the format war.  Then schild started talking about Japanese game developers and shit.

Don't blame me, blame Merusk and Stray.

Buh?  How did I derail this one this time?  I talked (well, summarized Stray's post) about the format war, the not console war.

 I don't think MS's long-term strategy gives a fuck-all about the X-box as a game system.  They're more intent on making sure it (or ANY MS 'appliance') is in people's mind as an established premier format delivery device (x-box live) by the time digital becomes THE format.

Japanese companies and games aren't making huge inroads.  They are ever less and less relevant to western gamers outside of the anime and hardcore base.  The SNES era where half of EGM could have been called "GAMES YOU WILL NEVER PLAY ROUNDEYE" has long since passed.

In the west its GTA, Madden, Halo, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero.

Nobody in the US except maybe you (and a couple people here) gives a shit about Monster Hunter.  Dragon Quest sells to the same crowd who buys Atlus titles (if they can find them anyhow).  MGS, FF, and RE still have some solid popularity but they are really 2nd tier franchises for the west.

Now Konami has its Soccer games which of course makes them VERY important to everywhere except the US, and its stuff like that which helps them out and they seem to be focusing on a bit more as the Japanese audience demands even more of the same shit, except with more MOE crap in it and not buying anything else.  Of course this means stuff like Condemned gets Sega publishing it, and games like Dead Rising which seem more aimed at making money outside of Japan than in it.

Yeah, all those American companies are dominating.  Like Nintindo.

tldr version: Blu ray was a bonus, not a reason to buy PS3 over Xbox.

Sony won a war nobody but Toshiba cared to fight. MS was on a price hunt so couldn't take HD-DVD. And they don't want it anyway. They want to be the publisher of content, not the middleman format-licensors and the media retailers. Lookit everything they're doing on XBox.

That format only matters if the average consumer gives a shit. And they largely don't yet. To other's points (and as previously discussed), they're just now getting HDTVs, which means they haven't even gotten HD cable TV yet, much less actual home theatre surround. And upconverted DVDs look pretty damned good on the average TV sizes being bought.

I made my point about the PS3 and Blu ray because the format war was won by proxy. People bought the PS3 for games and oh by the way got Blu ray along the way. There's a high overlap between people who buy consoles for their uber graphics (and brand loyalty, or hope) and early adopters of the HD system (TV, surround probably, cable signal, replaced library).

As to the console war: Wii "wins" by attracting players who wouldn't have bought a PS3 or Xbox anyway. To me, the only console war being fought is between MS and Sony.

I could give a Oprah's ham about Blu-Ray… …when I purchase new TV, which is soon, going to set a Mac Mini next to it and that will be all in one media player, playing DVDs, streaming video from other machines in the house, including DLs and podcasts and whatever else is on net… …yeah quality will be bad for the youtube stuff but H.264 looks pretty good even on my ancient 10+ year old HDTV…

Sad thing is I have an HDTV that is 10 years old, yet most people still don't have HDTV or they have crappy compressed cable HD… …and DVDs will take longer to deprecate than VHS did, eventually they will wane but that won't be for 5+ years, and then digital will be preferred mode of video delivery, except for the small segment of videophiles, but that market going to be small and thus, only big name titles cut for it…

I'm just glad that the 'war' ended because it forces a kind of a paralysis on the ability to adopt the new formats.

Nintendo wasn't in Schild's examples of oh so important Japanese companies (because he hates them and clearly the fact they are kicking Sony's ass is driving him to take an E Meter test...) and let's face it.  Nintendo is in their own little world driven by nostalgia and getting the people who are frankly sick of the current fratgamer or MMORPG catass bullshit the rest of videogaming seems to have become.

I wonder if price will play any role in DvD longevity. Everytime I think about picking up a Bluray I can get a DvD for $10-15 cheaper.

Yes.

DVDs are fine for 99% of the movie watching public. VHS got raped by DVD in a relatively short period of time because a disc offered significant mechanical as well as quality improvements over a magnetic tape. Blu-Ray doesn't have that same advantage over DVD. It's better but it doesn't obsolete DVD in one fell stroke as happened with VHS.

Videophiles and tech-fetishists are not the mass market.

Think of BluRay as the "LaserDisk" of the DVD era.

That would make the PS3 the Halcyon. Which is just retarded.

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Laserdisc was just flat out inconvenient. Probably perceived as being too luxurious at the time too. Nor is there anything competitive on the horizon that's fits it between two media formats, like in the case of Laserdisc. There's DVD, Blu-Ray, and then nothing. Unlike how DVD was right around the corner after Laserdisc, digital delivery still has enough kinks to work out to give Blu-Ray enough time to establish itself in the next 10 years.

..

Blu-Ray discs will more than likely drop in price sooner than DVD's did. I think that's the weakest point against it. The minute it stops becoming a good strategy to soak the "early adopter" market, they will drop. They don't cost much more to make, and there's not that much of a difference in price as it is (especially compared to when dvd's first came out). People are going to eventually want to actually take advantage of their HDTV's as well.

I think once people overcome the mistaken notion that they have to "buy everything again", it will speed up adoption as well.  Standard DVDs look good even on my relatively low-end Blu-Ray machine.

Eh?  I have a hard drive, an internet connection and a processor w/ video card that can do whatever needs to be done.

Forget these trivial little proprietary lock in dealies.  Let me pick what resolution I want to watch the movie in, click a button, have an instant remaster from the original, wait a few for the dl and watch it in whatever glorious detail I can display.

All without ever putting my pants on.   :drill:

Yeah, there's a rudimentary foundation for all of that to work. Maybe you even have a superfast connection. But it's just not something most of the world has the luxury of doing. A lot of people are only now getting broadband, and it's still not fast enough. A comparative (to BD) 1080p vid is at least 15-20gb, I believe. That's not convenient at all. Even waiting on 720p sucks. Even waiting on 480p sucks!  :-P

It's good enough right now.

I stream stuff from iTunes and it is decent. Many are happily using Apple TV to do same thing and it works pretty well…

Looks like dogshit to me.

[edit] Can you even buy their "hd" content yet? Last I checked, you can only rent it. And it's still going to take at least 5 or 6 hours to have it at that. That's lame.

I don't know what you are smoking but I DL 720p movies on my XBOX 360 in about an hour.  I don't have an AMAZING pipe or anything, standard cable.  If I had my brothers fiber connenction I'd have the movie downloaded before the popcorn was done popping.  Who the hell is talking about the rest of the world?  Since when has, "rest of the world" been relevant to next gen tech purchases?  You said, "DVD, Blue Ray, then nothing."  Which, as I pointed out is just entirely untrue.

The REAL 'next gen' media is the one that will mean there will never be another 'next gen' buy your whole library again brouhaha.

But we all know the holodeck means the end of human existence!

I'm talking about the rest of the world in the span of 10 years (I made the timeframe clear above). Many will still be in a bandwidth ghetto until then, and physical media will still be a desirable option for them.

Not to mention that that will be at least how long it would take for the majority of movie watchers to mentally switch from a "physical media" paradigm to a digital one. Right now, they prefer to have their stockings actually stuffed with something.

Ultimately, of course, there is a step beyond high capacity discs... I'm not arguing against that. But right now, it's practically "nothing". There aren't enough customers for it, or even a good catalog of movies for that matter. And quality wise, it isn't a comparable product to what you can cram on to a blu-ray disc.

How many suffering in the "bandwidth ghetto" now are going to care about DVDs in a few years either?

Most people who have HDTV's, but don't want to or can't deal with downloading big files time and again will buy blu-ray movies instead. Just because they don't have the capabilities or inclincation to download 15gb movie files doesn't mean they don't care about hd movies. Those are two seperate concerns.


And for the record, just about all of us (yeah you!) are in the bandwidth ghetto when it comes to this shit. You need more than standard broadband to make it practical.

I'm not really interested in downloading movies, I like physical copies. But with the high price of players (and media), I'm not ready to jump into bluray yet. And DVDs basically being obsolete (imo), I've stopped buying movies. So....good job, movie industry!

I would suggest that you are not dl'ing 720p movies in an hour.  HD video uncompressed are a 21Mbit stream...either your cable connection is ~60Mbps or you're bullseyeing womp rats with your T21.

Didn't we have this argument on page 4, except it was, err, Trippy vs Murgos or something?

Ultimately, the size of the file does not matter. Digital distribution is not about downloading a huge ass file to your even huger-assed storage medium. It's about broadband to it's logical conclusion: the infinitely ludicrous storage capacity behind streaming. Doesn't matter a whit where the movie is stored then. You don't need to "own" the media on your drive any more than someone needed to "own" the DVD they've long since started renting from Netflix.

It's about what you need to do at that exact moment, and the support infrastructure behind it.

And I say that within the next 5 years the folks who bought BD-ROMs two years ago will be the first folks living the purely streamed HD movie life.

And yes, a wrench in that is the portable devices. But WiMax should get around that. And if not, well, the masses aren't going to download a 1tb file, down convert for their iPhone, load it on through iTunes and then take the bus. Nah, chances are the bus will have Wifi at least and they'll just stream there too. Heck, the stupid shuttle we rent had an access point in it.

The problem I'm pointing out isn't storage, it's speed. Even streaming 1080p in local networks isn't that smooth unless you're using gigabit. But that's kind of a two steps forward, one back scenario if you want to be wireless.

Point being though, if there problems like this being posed just on a home network level, then the idea of some magical VOD LCARS fairy land doesn't seem too close on the horizon. It'll be awhile.

Anyhow, I don't understand the fuss. What the hell do you guys have against disc drives? 

^^ I guess some folks just don't want to own things.  They want disposable culture and all that hellish rot of suck.

Hmm, not owning things gets rid of the disposal aspect, and that's the upside. ;)

You're all fooling yourself with this HD download stuff. Just as audio went from CD to SACD/DVDA to BD DTS HD MA with ever decreasing relevance as people flocked to low fidelity compressed MP3s so it will be as people adopt video downloading en masse. The future is sure to be dominated by mass market tinny audio and low resolution video that can be experienced on $50 cell phones and crappy instantly obsolete laptops which will fill up the landfills at an alarming rate. Future old farts (and by that I mean you, dear 20 year old reader) will continue to pay more and more for high fidelity/resolution software as it becomes marketed in short publishing runs as "limited editions".

Can't wait for the new Opeth vinyl. :)

Comes to a point where one is overflowing with stuff. It becomes clutter. Then, in 5-10 years, you got to go out and get the same stuff in another format.

Some things are keepsakes, that you want to have physical presence forever.

But most stuff is just stuff that serves a temporary, fleeting interest, and after a few rounds of consumption, is not worth keeping.

Lately, been trying to get rid of stuff, and having it in electronic form makes a whole lot easier.

Yes, digital download video quality is awful compared to Blu-Ray or even uncompressed (not the cable company variety though, at least from what I've seen) HDTV.  But it works and it's watchable unless you're a videophile purist — today while working I was watching ABC shows (in their lame browser plugin) and they looked really good on widescreen 24" monitor…

But if you've got an overflowing shelf of physical content, you can donate it to the library and the less-fortunate in your community can all benefit from your disposal.

:)

I mis-spoke, I thought the HD movies on XBOX live were 720p.  They are 480p.

Regardless they run 3.5 to 4.5 GB and DL in 1 - 1.5 hours.

Also look up what the words COMPRESSED and UNCOMPRESSED mean.  My T21 needs a wash so I'm taking her over to Tashi station, but if you want to hook up later to go womp-ratting with me you're welcome to ride bitch.

Or send it to our soldiers stationed overseas.

Have done that, and have a big stack of books now I am going to box up and give away.

One thing about that though...

I'm not the Amazing Criswell or anything, but I don't see the HD video standards being replaced for a long time. That would be the only way that a blu-ray disc went obsolete. The method of delivery will eventually change, but at the very least, you don't have to worry about a Blu-Ray version of a movie you have being usurped by something greater than 1080p/hd audio anytime soon.

As for dealing with room to store physical content, that's a valid point. I made a rule for myself awhile back when my DVD collection got too big: I only buy "lonely guy" movies. Any genre, but it has to fit that description.  :grin:

I dunno, which do you think would appreciate the ol' porn collection more?  :grin:

I never, ever understood the whole 'throwing porn out' thing.  Retire it because you're bored of it maybe, but it gets a revisit down the line. 

Perhaps it's because I've never had a LIBRARY of porn before.  I guess if i had wall after wall of mags, dvds and other bric-a-brak.. no, not even then.

You people confuse me.

We'd never need more than 512k of RAM either.  :grin:

There's always more.

Then there's stereoscopic.

And then there's 3D :-)

Yeah, all of that shit is cool and all. On Demand star trekky shit. Holodecks. Etcetera.

But does it really need to be brought up now? It's really ironic besides.. You mention all of this future tech, yet you're kicking and screaming just to be dragged into the hd world. For now, you can get a good taste of what's to come anyways. Get a 50" plasma or lcd, a bd player, and pop in 300. Leonidas is practically in your friggin living room.

I don't want practically!

And I wouldn't want it to be Leonidas either  :oh_i_see:

Nah, it's just more circlejerking off of the topic of the format war. I've got my HD-DVD and my crappy "HD programming" from my cable company, which in this neck of the woods is two channels I've never heard of, History Channel HD which usually just stretches shit, Discovery and two networks that just add bar graphics on the side. It rather sucks, but at least I can play the Wii in 16:9. Years ago I disconnected a better home theater system than any of the ones any of the people I know have. Kids and a small house.

If any of this stuff starts to matter to me personally again, it'll likely be when Bluray players are at the $100 range, throwaway money. There's a whole list of things between $100 and $500 I'd rather spend money on than any CE player or the PS3 (for which there is even less reason for me to buy than a second Wii).

Only reason I join the chorus of belaboring the point is due to the ideal and unrealistic world in which I have a bunch of VC money to throw against something. It'd never be media format. Not anymore. The entire end user experience is changing, as it already has been for music and will definitely for movies. If Netflix survives, I'd say they're mostly a digital broadcaster in 6 years tops.

Actually, I used to think that the 300 transfer was kinda shit, but seeing it on a big lcd blew my mind. The way the foreground and actors overlay the scenery is kind of surreal on a giant lcd like that. Almost as if it were holographic.