I dont know if you have heard this but basically this guy does Podcasts for MS about the 360 and he interviewed some guys about HD DVD and Blu Ray and they basically say Blu Ray is crap, I was wondering is it all correct or just lies to sell HD DVDs? Lots of people seem to have believed every word in the podcast so if it is lies it could have turned alot of people off the PS3 and Blu Ray format
Amir is a shill on the avs forum for HDDVD. He's pretty Bias (works for blu-ray's 2nd arch nemesis=Microsoft.) so i'd take his & pretty much most avsforum talk for what it's worth. It's about as unbiased as asking Sony what they think of the xbox 360, ofcourse they are going to talk up their product, and leave out the benefits of the opposition. Why would you give consumers a reason to go to the competition?
He says MS was concerned about BR's viability...B.S. they where concerned about it taking sales from their own 360. The ps3's main sell is blu ray, and it's ps3's main value over an xbox360. (that and 3rd party support).
He then mentions the Durabis coating and how it's a "problem" in yeilds. But never mentions spin coating and that it's equal to DVD yeild rates and that this is going into effect in september. (he conveniently mentions nothing about spincoating).
He claims mpeg2 as defficient, but doesn't make it known that Blu-Ray has higher capable bit rate which would lead to higher PQ. All he "conveniently" mentions is vc-1 & mpeg2. Doesn't ever talk to the benefits of less compression (mpeg2) or what Higher bit rates (BR capable) can do.
Ofcourse he is only going to talk to up his vested interest. Then he pulls a figure out of his A$$ of a 90% return rate on samsung blu-ray by enthusiasts...yeah, okay? where is this data from? your bumm??? prove it!
Then he hypes up Hybrid DVD's...but fails to mention, you pay $10 more for this. Why would I want the standard def version if i'm buying HD? and to me, it's only a benefit if it's the same price or a dollar or two more IMO. Once again, he never mentions the cost effector dark side to this.
The further the article went on, His ASSumptions made him look more and more like the HDDVD tool he is. He goes on ASSuming that sony included BR into ps3 was a "last minute" decision which sony made...just because "suppossedly" sony fealt it was the only way BR could succeed... once, again...no factual backing, just his opinion....okay dude? where are yo getting this stuff? your Bumm? dang J-Lo is jealous of what yoru packin back there.
If you listen to this article, it sounds like NOTHING is a benefit on Blu-Ray which anyone who actually does the research for themself and doesn't listen to this shill would know. Toshiba, HDDVD & M$ rely's on consumers not doing the homework and just seeing a lower price, and no "apparent" need for what BR offers. Without mentioning the future, HDDVD only talks about today, and based on their spec. It's good for now, but that it. It's already maxed out, this is where BR will outperform in player content and recording space for BR recorders in the future.
I also like how when the second guy is "hyping up" bookmarking in HDDVD, then talks about showing off clips to his friends...fails to mention hurrendous load times on HDDVD. how convenient. I know my friends would be needling me the whole time about why it was taking so long.
This whole Podcast was nothing but an assasination mission on BR from who other than...a totally biased competitor. I got about 30 minutes in and heard enough nothing compelling, just more of the rehashed one sided B.S. that i see all over avsforum by the fanboys.
It's a very pretty picture they paint for HDDVD, unforuntately everything they speak to as an advantage for HDDVD is within spec for Blu-Ray. There is nothing HDDVD can do that Blu-Ray can't (besides having universal titles) but Blu Ray can do everything HDDVD can, and do it better...faster and more of it. But these employees of HDDVD would never openly say it, unless to dismiss it as unneccesary...extra space & speed is neccessary and only the HDDVD camp says otherwise.
Currently speaking about the difficulty of pressing Blu-Ray 50GB DL discs.
I think DL discs will ship this year. Now much they cost producers I have no idea.
Copy protection. Currently speaking about the two layers of copy protection for Blu-Ray. I agree here with Amir. Blu-Ray simply has too much DRM.
Speaking about codecs. MPEG2, VC-1 and AVC. Mentioned that with MPEG2 BD needs the larger space which is correct. Amir said %90 of BD owners have returned their player. I disagree with this. Brian could probably tell you more about return rates.
Talking about the Hybrid discs. HD DVD does have an advantage here but I don't know how important that will be overall for consumers.
Talking about interactivity now. Spoke about persistent storage, which is mandatory in every player, for storing bookmarks. Says Blu-Ray isn't mandating this. Dual video decoders are mandatory for PiP functions in HD DVD. Every player has a network connection its mandatory.
Trailers can change from network downloads. iHD based on 3 core technologies. ECMA, SMIL and XML.
Studio support- (Amir) "Studios are in this to make money." No studios have announced exclusivity. He thinks the other studios will come on line. Warner owns 40-%50 of last years top movies.
Players- RCA Thompson and Walmart selling players. Blu-Ray is getting more expensive with larger launch. More CE companies are now interested in HD DVD. " Where will we be during the Holidays?"
HD DVD laptops- Acer 9800 21" freakin laptop with a 1080p screen. OMG.
Audio Quality- TrueHD mandatory on HD DVD.
All in all I think they've been honest and candid. Blu-Ray can improve quickly with the utilization of VC-1 and 50GB DL. HD DVD is clearly a well thought out format that will improve quickly. Blu-Ray has some tricks of their own. It'll be interesting to see who executes better over the long haul.
The only Bold face lie was the 90% return. The rest was just him & his boy conveniently leaving out information that does not help their cause which is Hype up HDDVD, and Downplay Blu-Ray.
I have dealt with Amir on AVS, and I find that while he does lean WAY over towards HD-DVD, he also does have a lot more useful information than I have heard from anyone else. It is especially troubling to me that Sony or someone else from Blu-ray isn't stepping up as a press-relations person in this digital age. Perhaps a sign of how out of touch Sony has become with consumers over the years. They are DEFINITELY losing the PR war no matter who wins the format war in the long run.
Blu-ray could hype all the things that it has going for it and conveniently not mention what HD-DVD has going for it. But, in a few years, the technologies that HD-DVD requires, will be standard on all players. For $100 or so, you likely will be able to pick up that Blu-ray player with Ethernet, all the HD audio codecs in the world, 7.1 discrete analog output, etc.
As for DRM... Really - WHO CARES? I mean it! If you are hooking it up to your HDTV and it is transparent, then how exactly does it affect you? The ONLY people DRM affects is piraters. Those who want to make illegal copies of their videos. If we finally see MMC (Manadatory Managed Copy) show up with Blu-ray, than those who want legal distributing/backup in their homes will be given that ability. But, DRM should only really hurt piraters.
The extra layer of DRM that Blu-ray has is not because Blu-ray wanted more DRM, but because FOX wanted more DRM. So, Blu-ray responded, and now FOX will be releasing movies for Blu-ray. ANOTHER studio that is currently only making Blu-ray movies!
Really, spec-for-spec, right now, HD-DVD may have the advantage. But, long term? No way. It just is a sham! HD-DVD has to push hard, right now, if they have any hope whatsoever of having one iota of a chance in this format war.
As for M$ and Blu-ray viability? That's a joke and everyone knows it. M$ jumped on the HD-DVD bandwagon when all others had jumped ship. M$ only benefits from a format war as it allows M$ the chance to develop their HD program, to make relationships with studios, to perfect HD encoding, and perhaps even make a little bit of money. But, they will abandon it all when they work out online content delivery systems. Perhaps to the X360. If neither HD disc format gains enough of a foothold... and M$ is working hard to make sure this is the case, then online content delivery will be ripe for the picking. If Blu-ray or HD-DVD is a strong product in worldwide households, and there is NO confusion on what to buy, then M$ will have to show that online is a better way to get HD than through optical discs.
The difference is: "You want your HD movies and aren't sure which discs to buy? Just forget it and download them directly from us!" or "Sure, you have great movies on Blu-ray (or HD-DVD) and you own them, and everything is setup, and players are inexpensive, and all studios are supporting it... But, why don't you go with something completely different instead?"
The second concept is a much tougher sale - and in a billion dollar industry, you will invest a LOT to ensure that you have the strategic advantage.
And HD-DVD supporters are so sure CE manufacturers and studios are ready to 'jump ship' after less than a couple of months. SILLY!
I have dealt with Amir on AVS, and I find that while he does lean WAY over towards HD-DVD, he also does have a lot more useful information than I have heard from anyone else. It is especially troubling to me that Sony or someone else from Blu-ray isn't stepping up as a press-relations person in this digital age. Perhaps a sign of how out of touch Sony has become with consumers over the years. They are DEFINITELY losing the PR war no matter who wins the format war in the long run.
Blu-ray could hype all the things that it has going for it and conveniently not mention what HD-DVD has going for it. But, in a few years, the technologies that HD-DVD requires, will be standard on all players. For $100 or so, you likely will be able to pick up that Blu-ray player with Ethernet, all the HD audio codecs in the world, 7.1 discrete analog output, etc.
As for DRM... Really - WHO CARES? I mean it! If you are hooking it up to your HDTV and it is transparent, then how exactly does it affect you? The ONLY people DRM affects is piraters. Those who want to make illegal copies of their videos. If we finally see MMC (Manadatory Managed Copy) show up with Blu-ray, than those who want legal distributing/backup in their homes will be given that ability. But, DRM should only really hurt piraters.
The extra layer of DRM that Blu-ray has is not because Blu-ray wanted more DRM, but because FOX wanted more DRM. So, Blu-ray responded, and now FOX will be releasing movies for Blu-ray. ANOTHER studio that is currently only making Blu-ray movies!
Really, spec-for-spec, right now, HD-DVD may have the advantage. But, long term? No way. It just is a sham! HD-DVD has to push hard, right now, if they have any hope whatsoever of having one iota of a chance in this format war.
As for M$ and Blu-ray viability? That's a joke and everyone knows it. M$ jumped on the HD-DVD bandwagon when all others had jumped ship. M$ only benefits from a format war as it allows M$ the chance to develop their HD program, to make relationships with studios, to perfect HD encoding, and perhaps even make a little bit of money. But, they will abandon it all when they work out online content delivery systems. Perhaps to the X360. If neither HD disc format gains enough of a foothold... and M$ is working hard to make sure this is the case, then online content delivery will be ripe for the picking. If Blu-ray or HD-DVD is a strong product in worldwide households, and there is NO confusion on what to buy, then M$ will have to show that online is a better way to get HD than through optical discs.
The difference is: "You want your HD movies and aren't sure which discs to buy? Just forget it and download them directly from us!" or "Sure, you have great movies on Blu-ray (or HD-DVD) and you own them, and everything is setup, and players are inexpensive, and all studios are supporting it... But, why don't you go with something completely different instead?"
The second concept is a much tougher sale - and in a billion dollar industry, you will invest a LOT to ensure that you have the strategic advantage.
And HD-DVD supporters are so sure CE manufacturers and studios are ready to 'jump ship' after less than a couple of months. SILLY!
I couldn't agree with you more.
To that end, I want to share with everyone an AMAZING post that I can take ZERO credit for.
This person does not post here, but he does post prominently at several other forums and I really think he hit a homerun with this gem and covered so many things that I've tried to communicate, but he just did it a hell of a lot better.
The person that wrote the following is someone that I deem VERY objective and knowledgeable. He's seen it all. Done it all. Tried it all and owns it all. He owns both BD and HD-DVD players and the rest of it:
Quote:
As a company Sony certainly seems arrogant sometimes. But, that can probably be said of most companies of size. Still I’m not one to defend Sony. Right now they’re not my favorite studio to work with.
There’s a lot of useless debate and absurd predictions based on insufficient and often times inaccurate info being tossed around HD/BD discussion right now. And it’s very widespread. Apparently it’s even begun to gravitate toward the normally more lucid population here. The truth is that even the insiders don’t know how this thing is going to play out. Anything anyone foretells should be taken with a grain of salt, including much of what I have to say on the subject below. It’s all just speculation. HD DVD scored on the opening kickoff and stole the ball from BD on their opening drive. But we’ve just begun the first quarter of the season opener and it’s looking like a long road to the Superbowl. I’m not going to make excuses for Sony and LGs abysmal opening drive. They dropped the ball. Let them pick it up. But, each studio (team) in the BD league is responsible for its own stuff and Sony nor LG has shown the same proficiency as Warner or Fox in their DVD authoring.
I’ll reiterate what should be obvious that calls for BDs demise are woefully premature. But it’s understandable that people are still pulling for an end to this war, as naïve as that may be. The point where a war could have been avoided has come and gone for good or bad. The bad being the uncertainty in the market that, at best, could cause the slow adoption of a high definition disc format and, at worst could bring about the demise of both. The good is the competition; the quickened technological maturity and lowered cost. If not for this war, I personally don’t think we would have seen high definition discs for another year from either competing format. It’s obvious that neither was ready for market and neither still is fully featured.
But, I’m not complaining. Once you see good high definition there’s no going back and for me it’s easily worth the tradeoffs. For my money, between the titles already available and the titles announced, HD already has enough software support to justify the 500 bucks for hardware. If you’ve got a high def. FP, it’s a no-brainer. But, it’s understandable as well that some may want to wait on more fully featured hardware.
At the moment BD is almost impossible to recommend without extreme reservation. There are still too many questions about both the current hardware and software. If not for my position, I would have probably waited ‘til later in the year myself. But, it’s shortsighted and presumptuous to close the book because of a bad first impression, knowing what the format is capable of. If anything such opening opposition will make a good team try harder. We’ll see if Sony is such a team in the months ahead.
It’s easy to understand the motivation behind all the hostility toward BD around the net. I have been extremely disappointed and upset at all but a few BD titles myself. The format has not come close to delivering on its promises and that has just entrenched HD adopters that much more, re-igniting the call for one format only. Who wants to invest in two separate players, not to mention living with the fear that one day the format you are currently investing in could be phased out should the other be given a chance to mature. But such agenda does not contribute to objective discussion.
After seeing what HD can do, I’m honestly not so sure we have much to gain from BD. While I wouldn’t bet that any titles we have now will still be considered reference a couple years down the road, it’s almost hard to imagine most HD titles getting much better. But, HD has had a number of misses as well and we haven’t even seen a 30GB HD DVD completely devoted to the feature presentation alone yet. Just imagine if Sony imparts their superbit philosophy to a BD50 with VC1 and DTS-HD master audio or lossless Dolby TrueHD. Right now it seems like overkill even for a four hour film considering how amazing even an HD15 can look. But, we really don’t know just what either format is truly capable of yet. As amazing as HD seems now, it’s still in its infancy just as much as BD. It’s just a faster learner apparently.
Still I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that the quality is there with HD to a point that it doesn’t leave much room to grow from well encoded discs from newer masters. BD should someday very soon be more competitive with what HD is doing with most of their titles already. And if that doesn’t prove the case then I’ll be screaming bloody murder as well. Sony may not be quick to change their ways, but other studios I know already plan to switch to VC1 as soon as possible. It’s expected that Warner will be doing VC1 later this year, if they aren’t already, and are even starting out with DD+ audio. LG has already announced DTS-HD support for their second wave of BD titles as well. The current hardware just won’t support it any better than the Toshibas support DTS HD or TrueHD. But there should be something out that will within a couple months.
Ultimately, as long as BD retains exclusivity with Fox and Buena Vista, which seems highly probable for the foreseeable future, HD has no shot at all of winning a format war. That doesn’t mean that BD is a sure bet either. But with Universal the lone hold out from supporting BD, odds would be in BD’s favor for an eventual finality if there ever is one. The studios will go where the money is. But, BD has plenty of time to get their act together and become more competitive before the day comes that money is a swaying argument – assuming HD doesn’t pull another end around.
Here are the blatant errors and misstatements in the podcast:
Contrary to Kevin's claim, persistent storage is required in all Blu-ray players. Additional storage for audio/video clips is currently optional.
Yes, Amir, naked Blu-ray discs are quite susceptible to scratches. But no one is releasing naked Blu-ray discs, they all come with a coating which makes them far more robust than HD-DVD and DVD.
The codec shootout Amir refers to where VC-1 beat MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC didn't attempt to benchmark AVC's best quality mode, "high profile". It is highly unlikely the same test done today would yield the same results.
Developing content for BD-J doesn't require "expensive Java programmers". That's what authoring tools are for, to provide an environment suited for the skills of the author. Oh, and incidentally, the last time I looked at the tutorials for developing iHD code on Peter Torr's blog, the code looked remarkably similar to Java code, and I doubt your average cheap "web-page designer" would have a clue on how to make use of it.
Whats unforutnate, is this thread will never get the exposure that the podcast filled with M$/HDDVD's "hype" will.
People will download that, listen...think it's objective discussion and go, "gosh Blu-Ray is a waste, I'll just get HDDVD"
they won't know that most of it is half truth, and that it's from biased people with vested interests in the success of the format.
Also, it was posted that Sony has become "arrogant" I think Toshiba is equally so, especially to knowingly release a Buggy peice of hardware with the promise of fixes via firmware (which yes they have delivered some) However, how can you expect J6P to contantly DL updates regularly? They are going to assume it sucks and return it(most likely not knowing you can update it), I know I would.
I'd like to hear a podcast with Alan Parsons and some insider engineers about the future prospect of Blu-Ray.
I realize that Amir is going ot hype HD DVD and I do have to take some things with a large grain of salt. Blu-Ray is going to have some nifty features as well that are unique and I want these features articulated to myself.
Both formats have room for growth. I'm ready to see the products evolve.
in the new major nelson podcast major nelson called out for a sony represtitive or blue ray reperesentative, perhaps you guys in the know should do an interview with him to get it heard that blue ray isnt so bad
I don't know. Amir certainly doesn't offer any points regarding superior Blu-Ray features but if he was lying about the technological features of HD DVD outright he'd get called on it.
Other than the %90 return rate of Sammy players quote I couldn't really disagree with what he's stated but I also couldn't state that Blu-Ray could not replicate the same features.
I don't know. Amir certainly doesn't offer any points regarding superior Blu-Ray features but if he was lying about the technological features of HD DVD outright he'd get called on it.
Other than the %90 return rate of Sammy players quote I couldn't really disagree with what he's stated but I also couldn't state that Blu-Ray could not replicate the same features.
^ we seem to be an agreement more & more everyday!
I bothers me that Microsoft feels the need to bad mouth their competition.
Really they should just promote what they think is best in their own technology and perhaps show where they have advantage.
But trash talking the opposition is making this whole thing like politics and my overall feeling is that I want nothing to do with it.
Call me old fashioned but I liked it when everyone was talking up the good points of new tech and getting a positive buzz going.
Perhaps I remember things through rose coloured glasses...
In any case, I would not lose a second of sleep if Amir took a long walk off a short plank. Personally I feel his useful input is far outweighed by his BS. And people on the AVS do call him on his comments.
yeah, Wifeb8...MAX & Ratman all gangin up on me on HDTVoice..
Then a dogpile ala Matrix Reloaded with 10,000 Smith's (fanboys) all over me on the AVSforum.
no thanks =)
I stopped going to HDTVoice since they deleted a post I started that rebuffed some of the FUD that was constantly said as an 'advantage' for HD-DVD. I didn't get a PM about it, it wasn't locked... and it was LONG. So, after typing for 30 minutes to fully explain what was being said, the post got one or two hits, then was deleted by someone without explanation.
F' THEM if that's how they want to deal with discussions on a format that a mod or two doesn't like.
AVS Forum is lousy about the fanbois, but at least there can be some rational discussion at times. And I have called Amir out once or twice and he directly responded civilly and politely... Which, at the very least, puts him into a category that many others on forums simply can't achieve. Including myself sometimes.
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MS put down blu-ray but are their facts correct
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