DVD Format War Looms

[zombie]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/0...eut/index.html

DVD format war looms

Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 3:14 p.m. EDT (19:14 GMT)

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) --

Chances looked slim that consumers will be spared a DVD format war, as the backers of one standard said on Friday there was no common ground for a unified format and it was on track for a market launch within a year.

"If we want a unified standard, it has to be better than the sum of the parts. We would like to find something that's better in the other standard than ours, but we haven't found it," said Frank Simonis, a spokesman for backers of the Blu-ray standard.

Speaking on the sidelines of the IFA consumer electronics trade fair, Simonis said the Blu-ray association was ready to lay down the specifications of the higher-capacity DVD format in the spring of 2006.

The rival HD DVD camp has recently had to push back its launch into the New Year. "We're no longer lagging behind," said Simonis, who is also strategic marketing director at the optical storage unit of Philips Electronics.

At stake is the multibillion dollar market for DVD players, PC drivers and optical disks. Blu-ray promises higher capacity DVD disks (up to 50 Gigabytes) that can store high definition films and better interactivity and security.

The HD DVD camp, on the other hand, claims it has a cheaper technology compatible with current DVD and CD players.

Blu-ray is backed by the majority of electronics makers, including Sony, Matsushita, Samsung, Philips, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Hitachi.

The HD-DVD camp consists of Toshiba, NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric as main hardware vendors.

The battle between the two camps has become intense after a failed attempt this spring by several of the main Japanese electronics companies to bring together the two standards.

The support of the Hollywood studios and television producers, crucial partners who will have to print pre-recorded disks with movies and TV series, has been more evenly spread and many have held their options open.

However, studio owner 20th Century Fox said at IFA it had chosen Blu-ray after its backers improved security features that will prevent DVD piracy hurting the industry.

"We talked to both formats and asked them: 'What are you going to do about content protection?' We asked them to step up their content protection in a serious way, and the members of Blu-ray association won," said Andy Setos, president of engineering at the studio which is owned by News Corp.

He also said that production costs of Blu-ray are "competitive" and that the format is interoperable with existing DVDs and CDs formats.

Hollywood is suffering from rampant piracy, because the initial DVD standard that was put together exactly 10 years ago had been rushed to market and lacked features to prevent unauthorized copying and playback.

"DVD is not good. It isn't secure, the capacity is too low, the bit rate is too low," Simonis said.

In China in particular, many films are reproduced on DVDs illegally and sold at a dollar apiece on street corners. "We sell 20,000 DVDs a year in China, and they're priced at just $4.99. Just to prove a point," Setos said.

Yet, even the piracy underlines the success of DVD. It has been the fastest-adopted technology in consumer electronics history and has generated billions of euros in royalties for the inventors, a broad base of consumer electronics companies including firms now divided over its successor.

The fight for license income may yet hurt the interests of consumers who face two disk formats which do not play back in all devices, invoking memories of the VHS-Betamax war for the VHS standard, or more recently the rewritable DVD standard.

On top of that, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely.

"A hacked player is any player that is doing something it's not supposed to do," Setos said, adding the jury was still out if regional coding would be maintained or scrapped.

The controversial regional code prevents DVD disks that have been bought in one continent to play on devices elsewhere.

[Sidewinder]

Internet-connected Players? I cannot imagine that every BR Player will be Internet-connected...are they talking about Players in the PC?
Why should someone, who'd like to watch a movie on a BR Disc, plug his standalone Player on a Router? That's just plain silly, isn't it?

And this regional coding thing should not be repeated in the next generation of DVDs, I mean who wants to pay more for a late european or american release of butchered asian movies? And if there ins't any european release planed of a specific asian film, how to watch it? Buy an asian BR-Player along with the movie, then plug it to the internet and oh surprise "This BR-Player isn't intended for the european region, therefore it will be terminated!!" :shock:
I hope I'm just being paranoid here, but they could for example lock down YOUR BR-Disc you just bought, so it can only be played on YOUR BR-Player...

[Sidewinder]

Nobody here to calm my paranoia? :shock:

[Gorkab]

Originally Posted by Sidewinder

Nobody here to calm my paranoia? :shock:

Don't worry, there will be some players to have this functionality, not all, can you imagine that if you're not connected, you can't see any movie ? That would be something like Pay per View ! :shock:

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by Gorkab

Don't worry, there will be some players to have this functionality, not all, can you imagine that if you're not connected, you can't see any movie ? That would be something like Pay per View ! :shock:

Then it really would be time to storm the barricades as it were :?

[thunderhawk]

It will be on a way.

An internet connection costs money so it sure is Pay Extra and View or...
Whatever happens, I want one, not internet connected if this will be true. And if players exists without an ethernet connection, there wont be a reason anymore for players to have an internet connection because of copyrights, everyone will switch over to non-internet connected ones... + It wouldn't be effective anyway

[Alex Pallas]

Originally Posted by n2blu

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/09/02/dvd.format.war.reut/index.html

never mind the fact that this news comes from Berlin, i would hate to think that supporting Blu-Ray means supporting nazi's

[zombie]

Originally Posted by Alex Pallas

never mind the fact that this news comes from Berlin, i would hate to think that supporting Blu-Ray means supporting nazi's

Give me a break! That's an absolutely ridiculous comment.

[Alex Pallas]

Originally Posted by n2blu

Give me a break! That's an absolutely ridiculous comment.

perhaps i read that wrong, but the 'consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players' part makes me wonder...

[zombie]

While it does indeed sound bad I just thought comparing it to Nazis was a bit harsh. I agree that the whole remote disabling of a player is not necessary but the studios do have investments to protect. Years of people renting and copying their DVDs and others who upload them to the net in file-sharing programs have made the studios paranoid.

[Knight-Errant]

Indeed the copyright violation problem seems to have progressed far enough to make the studios consider more extreme measures.
By all accounts it's a worse problem now than it ever has been before.

[Alex Pallas]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

Indeed the copyright violation problem seems to have progressed far enough to make the studios consider more extreme measures.
By all accounts it's a worse problem now than it ever has been before.

the only problem is now private rights are being violated, while i have no desire to trade these movies i would like the option of being able to store the videos on my computer without being prosecuted or becoming a criminal

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by Alex Pallas

the only problem is now private rights are being violated, while i have no desire to trade these movies i would like the option of being able to store the videos on my computer without being prosecuted or becoming a criminal

Agreed. The problem I see is, what protection can there be to prevent you from trading in that situation?

Just playing devil's advocate here.

[Alex Pallas]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

Agreed. The problem I see is, what protection can there be to prevent you from trading in that situation?

Just playing devil's advocate here.

nothing i suppose but my good character, but let me be honest i prefer to have things on my pc so if i cant store these Blu-Ray discs on my pc, i might just bootleg the movies. see its backwards now, because i couldn't have the freedom of storing my movies on my computer, i will have to store someone else's movies on my computer; i know that p.o.v. doesn't justify bootlegging, but the plain truth is that i can decrypt my regular DVDs and store them on my harddrive instead of taking a whole mess of discs around with me, if i dont have that freedom, who knows?
but the real issue that worries me is that we cannot modify our own private property (such as a player I buy), thats the only reason i compared the situation to nazism

[erdega79]

I am not in favour of storing movies on computer for simple reason that hard drive capacity and cost is far more than an optical disk. From that perspective it makes little to no sense to store it on a computer