Archived: Insiders Thread

[darinp2]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

That works if you have a single CPU. Most settop players use specialized chips for each operation

I was referring to the PS3, with the Cell processor and the memory it has.

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

The PS3 has the horses to do everything, so whatever happens, lack of power isn't going to be the cause

I think there is a good chance you are wrong. It only has so much memory besides the Cell processor and if DTS HD MA can be done when other special things aren't being done, but there isn't enough of something to do it with all the other special stuff that could be going on, then I vote to enable it for just the straight movie playback situation.

--Darin

[whippersnapper]

Originally Posted by OokieSpookie

Do any of our insiders have any insight into Fox?
ID4 is indeed added to the very long and embarrassing list of cancelations.
This is becoming all too common and reflects badly on the format as a whole.
There has to be a reason out there.

OokieSpookie, you should have chosen the user name Eeyore (you know -- of Winnie the Pooh fame). I swear, I think just about everything you post is filled with pessimism and/or complaints. You're not trying to depress us, are you? You ought to lighten up some - at least sometimes.

[hoser]

Originally Posted by Innerloop

Here's an even better option - DON'T buy the box sets on DVD at all, and just watch them on Universal HD.

The faster DVD sales taper off, the sooner that companies like Universal will have to get serious about HD media and put their content on a format that will actually SELL instead of just selling their content for bribes.

Seriously, every dollar that the DVD market drops in the next few months is money that the executives have to try to make up somewhere else to please the shareholders. If everyone with HD players stopped buying low-def media today, it would have a noticable impact on their sales and force them to step up their efforts to get HDM to reach mass adoption levels.

Couldn't agree more.
Buying DVDs and HD-DVDs just prolongs the adoption of BD by the masses.
And none of us of us want that.

[eat_me_cool]

Originally Posted by darinp2

Just wanted to add to this that I would be perfectly fine if DTS HD MA was only supported when the movie was playing by itself without any special features. That is, if enough of the processor or memory would be needed for doing internet connectivity stuff, PiP, etc., then dropping to the DTS core whenever other things are running would be fine with me (as long as the transitions didn't have big problems, like popping).

--Darin

DTS-MA should be very very easy to decode. Its not doing very much.

[Balian]

Originally Posted by Elandyll

Imdb News is having a field day between SM3's "Lackluster sales" and the Toshiba press anouncement of their "750k HD DVD player milestone".

Honestly Insiders, if any of you has any say in releasing official numbers, please do so. the 300% PS3 sale surge doesn't tell anything about volume, and it doesn't translate directly in Blu Ray market when you read it.

Take a low key estimate on PS3 used as Blu Ray players, and release a number PS3 Blu Ray + standalones to shut their mouth. Any unitiated reader would be tempted to think that HD DVD dominates the market ...

Seriously, why don't they mentioned the much more lackluster sale of Shrek the Turd. It only sold some 33,000 units and it was a $300+ million blockbuster. At least Spider-man 3 had an excuse ...the Spider-man Trilogy took some sale away. Some of these news outlets are so bias.

[kowhite]

Originally Posted by Balian

Seriously, why don't they mentioned the much more lackluster sale of Shrek the Turd. It only sold some 33,000 units and it was a $300+ million blockbuster. At least Spider-man 3 had an excuse ...the Spider-man Trilogy took some sale away. Some of these news outlets are so bias.

Because the imdb news quote refers ONLY to DVD, where Shrek 3 didn't really sell any worse than Spiderman 3. The part about Spidey has nothing to do with hi-def sales. In fact, the entire news blurb is about DVD sales waning...and has nothing to do with HDM.

[darinp2]

We've seen a report that Europe is at 73:27 for software sales YTD. However, the PS3 didn't launch until March in Europe and my understanding is that HD DVD was ahead for software sales at that point. Will there be any reports of what software sales have been since the PS3 launch in Europe?

On that note, I've read that PS3 sales have picked up in Germany recently and in France it looks like Sony may pass their goal of 500k PS3s by the end of the year with 100k just since October 12th (might be shipped to stores, but still looks like a good sign). Is anything special being done in these areas to convert PS3 owners into Blu-ray movie watchers?

In France Ratatouille is the number one movie of the year and when it gets released on Blu-ray I think there will be a nice opportunity to turn people in France toward getting movies on Blu-ray. I don't know how many of the PS3 owners there are aware of the Blu-ray movie playing part, but tie-ins with Ratatouille there (including it free with each PS3, advertising which mentions that movie and the PS3, etc.) would seem like they could be very effective with the popularity of that movie there. And even though it shouldn't be out until next year in France, it would seem like a good idea to get the word to any reporters in France considering writing about the formats this year, that Ratatouille will be exclusive to Blu-ray and will play in the PS3. Some people there might be swayed toward the PS3 by that.

--Darin

[Kris Deering]

Talkst8t,

What is your take on the rather long booting times for a lot of the newer Java titles? Is this something we'll see improved upon in the near future? It is really the only issue I'm having with Blu-ray software so far.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by SuprSlow

Sorry if you may have covered this before, but after reading this, it sounds as if you guys have specific "assignments" to certain forums. Is this the case and is it done by your employers? Or, is it just a "backyard football play, drawn up on the fly" kinda thing?

Thanks again for yours and all the insiders' hard work.

It's more like drawn up on a napkin in a bar.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by SuprSlow

Thanks again for yours and all the insiders' hard work.

I’m always working hard when I visit this forum ……………….

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=370

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=372

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...128#post375128

[ra1024]

I was curious if any insiders could comment on whether it would be possible to "punish" Toshiba and Paramount when HD DVD finally dies? I would love to see them refuse to grant Toshiba a license to make blu-ray players or give Paramount a steep price for releasing titles on BR.

It's one thing to compete and to try to make your product beat the competition but I think they've crossed the line way too often with unethical behavior ( ie Amir). Would this sort of retribution be feasible or legal? I seem to remember Penton or MaxPower saying there would be retribution when all the dust settles but I thought that might have just meant certain indivuals within the industry.

[Rio]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

What is your take on the rather long booting times for a lot of the newer Java titles? Is this something we'll see improved upon in the near future? It is really the only issue I'm having with Blu-ray software so far.

Long booting times on the 1G players seems mainly due to the lack of hardware decoding acceleration of graphics like PNG files. Lack of hardware acceleration and limited memory bandwidth were causing longer decoding time.

2G players/recorders like Panasonic BD30/BW700/BW800/BW900, Sony T50/T70/X90 have hardware graphics decoder in the new SoC and loading time is significantly reduced for those BD-J titles. Also graphics rendering speed gets much faster, (of course PS3 is doing much better), so playing Pinball game in Surf's Up becomes no problem on those machines unlike 1G players.

Another improvement I found is the ability to read files during AV playback. For example, Disney's "Filmmaker Q&A" uses this function, during playing the main feature, user can choose the question and the player loads the director's commentary audio data on demand, then play it mixing with the main feature's audio. On almost all of the 1G players do not support this function, only PS3 support this, but now at least 2G recorders of Panasonic and Sony support this. Since the file is loaded during AV playback, sometime it makes AV playback stuttering or takes long time to finish loading, what made me surprised was that new Panasonic finished loading file much faster than PS3 and without any AV stuttering, while PS3 sometimes caused AV playback pause during loading the file.

[pro-bassoonist]

To Mr.Paidgeek:

First of all I wish you a quick recovery sir, we were told you weren't feeling well during the last week or so.

Second, I see that Sony Pictures have now officially announced Moliere (SDVD) for January 22. I was wondering if there might be any plans for a BR release.

Once again, I hope you recover quickly.

Pro-B

[hoser]

Originally Posted by ra1024

I was curious if any insiders could comment on whether it would be possible to "punish" Toshiba and Paramount when HD DVD finally dies?

The most painful punishment of all would be to boycott their products.
Nothing would hurt them more.

[spicynacho]

Hi, I have been a long time lurker here but the recent news of one million discs in Europe and 97% of the market in Japan got me thinking. This is directed at any insiders who could pass it along to the BDA but I guess mostly studio insiders like paidgeek, RBFilms, Maxpower1987, or Penton-Man.

Given that HD DVD has pretty much rolled over and died in Japan and Europe, why not try to win 100% studio support in those markets? This would reduce the format war to only one front.
How much would it cost to offer the HD DVD exclusive studios a handsome buyout package for region B and Japanese only versions of all their movies? Surely less then the cost HD DVD paid for Paramount/DW in August since HD DVD has less of a foothold in these markets, the studios’ fixed costs are being spread across fewer units.
This maneuver could show us how quickly high def media can gain on the real enemy, DVD, without a format war to deter adoption. There are many here in the US that are scared of buying a dead format so continue using the DVD format because it is good enough.

If I were offering the buyout package here is what I would include:
Free replication of first X thousand BR Discs for 2008 where X is the number of HD DVD Discs they have sold in 2007. Estimated cost ~$10-15M since they have sold only 370K HD DVDs in Europe and probably fewer in Japan.

Free authoring or subsidized authoring and training for menus and features. BR specs exceed HD DVD's specs on space and bandwidth so if they already have an A/V encode for HD DVD all they need is new menus to create a BR release. I'm not sure how much this would cost, but I imagine it wouldn't be too much.

A disc swap program for customers who have already purchased HD DVDs to replace them with BDs. This will make the customers happy since the only price they will have paid for the format war is the cost of a HD DVD player. You could even throw in a player rebate program, send in your old HD DVD player and all your movies and the BDA will send you a replacement copy of each movie on Blu Ray and a $100 coupon (in local currency) toward the purchase of a BR player and recycle the HD DVD player. The cost for the disc swap should be on the order of $10-15M and the coupon program should be about the same since they touted their 3.8 attach rate that works out to about 100K HD DVD players.

Offer to subsidize shipping of HD DVDs to consumers who still insist on using the format. HD DVD is region free so if the studio provides their content in America on HD DVD the BDA will pay the difference for international shipping over domestic shipping when the HD DVD is ordered through the studios' website. This should have a nominal cost since it probably won't be heavily utilized.

Funding for a 12 month study on the affects of a unified format the study would cover the areas of format adoption rates, changes in profitability of home video, and rates of piracy of home video. If the results of this study are positive, and how could they be negative, it will provide a clear picture on the benefits of dropping HD DVD support in the NA market. Indicating the intention for it or asking for monthly progress reports will make sure the accountants are keeping track of things.

Total cost for a program such as this should be less than $100M but the benefits would be immeasurable. CE companies are able to ramp up production of players, reducing BR player costs in NA. Replication factories can ramp up production. HD DVD exclusive studios get a taste of blu, and get there content ready for the NA launch of blu. Purple studios get a feel for what its like to have only one format to support and see (higher) profits from their HDM division. Not to mention the blow to the morale of the red side of seeing official collapse of the format in the rest of the world, proof of de facto support has already been a big blow to their morale.

[Beta-guy]

Penton: I was thinking wasn't there talk about Universal's contract being up in Sept or Oct? If I am remembering correctly, did they resign?

[spicynacho]

Another suggestion. Its been seen again and again that the surefire way to kill a BR release is to release it after the DVD is on the market. Why not try to reverse that and kill the DVD release by putting BR movies on the shelf on Mondays and the DVDs on Tuesday. There would be no need for a second marketing campaign. Just say, "Pirates of the Carribean: at world's end available on DVD December 4th and available early on Blu Ray," at the end of the commercial and show the two versions with a 12/4 on the DVD and a 12/3 on the BR. Sony could also push the PS3 game releases to mondays to get more PS3 owners in the store on the same day as BR releases.

[Joe Cain]

Given the small size of the HDM market and the myriad costs involved in authoring, replicating, and marketing still-developing technology, how likely is it that any studio has yet seen a genuinely profitable return on this grand experiment? Isn't the market going to have grow further before any studio breaks even? (Can I get an informed opinion on this without asking anyone to violate NDAs?) Thanks.

[USF Bull]

I was wondering if anyone knows how long until we start seeing the price of blu-ray movies start drop?? I know that with mass production the price will drop, but right now blu is selling alot of movies and PS3 games are picking up speed, how long until the price per disc starts to go down??

[savage1984]

Originally Posted by spicynacho

Another suggestion. Its been seen again and again that the surefire way to kill a BR release is to release it after the DVD is on the market. Why not try to reverse that and kill the DVD release by putting BR movies on the shelf on Mondays and the DVDs on Tuesday. There would be no need for a second marketing campaign. Just say, "Pirates of the Carribean: at world's end available on DVD December 4th and available early on Blu Ray," at the end of the commercial and show the two versions with a 12/4 on the DVD and a 12/3 on the BR. Sony could also push the PS3 game releases to mondays to get more PS3 owners in the store on the same day as BR releases.

I second this idea. An out-of-the-box idea that would really boost sales. Not that sales are suffering, but another large blow to both dvd and hd-dvd....