HD-DVD combo discs problems emerging

[GasCat]

I thought I would pass this on. The combo discs (i.e. "Children of Men" or "The Good Shepherd.") are starting to circulate and many HD-DVD users are complaining that they won't play.

According to insider "jimby_99" on AVS the problem is with the HD-DVD format itself.

"I'll throw my two cents in here. I am a production supervisor on a current HD-DVD and Blu-ray release (NIN), and I went through the process of authoring and manufacturing for both formats, for both the main releases and sampler discs.

There are two problems with making titles for HD-DVD that Blu-ray doesn't have:

1. It's not possible to make a full HD-DVD burn yet to check the entire title; you have to preview the title on an emulator, which does NOT give you the ability to QC in various players. This is a huge disadvantage compared to Blu-ray, where you can make a Blu-ray burn and run it in specially modified production players.

Without the ability to burn check discs, there is virtually no way to do proper QC.

Of course you could do a manufacturing run at the plant for test discs, but for every run that you do, you have to purchase AACS security keys, which cost a bundle, and then you lose a week in the schedule waiting for the discs to be run. Not to mention that some manufacturers have large minimum quantities that make this unbelieveably costly to do.

2. The verifier software that Toshiba is responsible for is (in my opinion) not currently up to the task. For those who don't know what verifier software is...this is the software that is run when the title is received at the manufacturing plant to verify that the authoring is "legal" and to the specification. It's meant to catch specification-related bugs in the authoring BEFORE the disc is replicated.

I had a issue on one series of HD-DVDs that we ran at a well-known replicator that passed the verifier, but would not play on the Toshiba A1 player. In fact, it caused the player to require a reboot after the disc was inserted into the player. This is completely unacceptable for verifier software, and Toshiba is mostly is responsible for this piece. My company ended up eating part of the cost of a replication run because of this problem.

So I wouldn't be too hard on Universal as a lot of this stuff is probably beyond their control." - jimby_99