Film studios set to release Blu-ray and HD DVD titles today

Today the film studios will (finally) be announcing new Blu-ray and HD DVD titles in hopes of jump-starting the multi-billion-dollar next-generation formats while staving off criticism that they are responsible for delays. Twentieth Century Fox will release 20 Blu-ray films including "Fantastic Four" and "Ice Age" with Sony Pictures dropping an additional 20 Blu-ray titles including "The Fifth Element" and "Hitch." HD DVD supporters will get some love from Warner Bros. who will deliver the goods in both formats. Now how about some players, playas?

[gerbick @ Jan 4th 2006 5:13AM]

What's going to be the prices of these things (the movies) though? That's a question that still remains unanswered.



Is it more, less, the same?

[Ray Morris @ Jan 4th 2006 5:29AM]

Don't worry about the prices, even a free movie is no good if it becomes obsolete. Hurry up and wait!

[Tommi @ Jan 4th 2006 5:47AM]

This is all about DRM and it sucks big time, there no advantage with these new formats for the consumer, only disadvantages.



DVD format was great compared to VHS because: Better picture quality, media is smaller, no more rewinding back and forth, multi-language, menus, extras, re-releases of old movies with better quality and so on. DVD gacve lots of new features. That's the reason why everyone has a DVD-player. But is there any reason why consumer would want/should switch to this new format? The new formats are all about DRM and I say NO THANKS!

[elmimmo @ Jan 4th 2006 5:53AM]

I thought AACS was not ready yet. Are they releasing the first batch of movies unencrypted or what?

[elmimmo @ Jan 4th 2006 5:56AM]

Oh, and what about region locks for HD-DVD. I thought that was not decided yet either� This piece of news is incomplete.

[Murc @ Jan 4th 2006 6:19AM]

#4...???



You hit the nail on the head...but missed the wood.



THe point of these new formats really comes down to one thing...High Def movies.



When dvd's came out the movies could fit on one single layer dvd, but now all the new dvd's are dual layered, which is 8.5 gigs, but some movies (with extras included) are beyond that even.



The main purpose for Blu-Ray & HD-DVD is for when they start recording everything in HD...that means movies & tv shows mainly, and dvd just doesn't have a capacity for the 21st century high def demand

[Murc @ Jan 4th 2006 6:21AM]

my bad...I meant number 3...not 4.

[Finished.Law.School @ Jan 4th 2006 6:32AM]

Why bother releasing crap movies like fantastic 4 before anyone even has a player?

[Jeff @ Jan 4th 2006 7:56AM]

"This is all about DRM and it sucks big time, there no advantage with these new formats for the consumer, only disadvantages. "



Yeah, because 1920x1080 is no advantage over 720x480.



:/



I understand that DRM is a problem and I find it as unacceptable as anyone. But to say that there are "no advantages" with these formats is a little disingenuous. There is in fact a greater jump in picture quality from DVD to either of these new formats than there was going from VHS to DVD. We're talking about eight times more picture detail here (vs. around four times more in DVD vs. VHS).



I'll be getting a PS3 so I'll have Blu-Ray at some point regardless. Then it's just a question of defeating the DRM, which will probably be about as easy as it is with DVD's eventually.

[EdZ @ Jan 4th 2006 8:00AM]

Fifth element? I just finished watching a 1080i TS (that's Transport Stream, the way MPEG2 and AC3 audio is packaged for broadcast). The files just fit onto a dual-layer DVD.



Remember, this is using MPEG2, not H.264 (which has a much better compression ratio). The extra space in the new formats are for extras, and (more importantly) for users who want to burn discs. For me, Blu-ray is king due to the much larger capacity.

[OddManOut @ Jan 4th 2006 8:29AM]

A resounding "meh" as far as HD content goes. Though 'Jeff' does make a good point...



"There is in fact a greater jump in picture quality...about eight times more picture detail here (vs. around four times more in DVD vs. VHS)."



...so does 'Finished.Law.School'...



"...releasing crap movies like fantastic 4..."



Until the movies THEMSELVES improve from the schlock currently permeating theaters I see no reason to enhance the visual quality when all it will do is increase the price of a crappy 'cinematic' experience.



I mean...how clearly do you need to see CRAP ?



But, that said I guess the sooner these new discs hit the market in SOME form or another, the sooner we will start seeing this stuff on the PC/DATA side of things, which will be nice (assuming the discs aren't as expensive as DL continues to be).



And at that, I guess I wouldn't mind being able to fit both 'Gig's of GITSSAC and the 1995 GITS feature on ONE disc...

[delerious @ Jan 4th 2006 8:52AM]

No matter what it costs, I'm buying Ice Age on Blu-Ray.

[Carlton Bale @ Jan 4th 2006 8:53AM]

As long as Mandatory Managed Copy is supported and I can legally copy movies to my media server, I can live with the DRM. But if it turns out that only some movies allow copying, if the DRM ever gets in the way, or if I have to continually "reactivate" movies, I'll stick to buying regular DVDs. HD does look better, but a great scaler makes watching regular DVDs a viable option if DRM results in the new formats being too unfriendly.

[John Doe @ Jan 4th 2006 9:35AM]

I wouldn't mind seeing Fifth Element in its HD glory on my Toshiba widescreen. I'm excited about the next generation HD players but also worried. If they have product activation in them I won't go anywhere near them and that will make me :-(

[Broo @ Jan 4th 2006 9:44AM]

I will stay with DVDs upsampled to 1080i with Windows MCE 2005 for a while; the only major difference I noticed in true 1080i versions of total recall and Terminator 2 (WMVHD discs) were that I could see more of the original film effects (scratches, blotches, etc).



I am still unclear of the real need for blue-ray, (other than it can scratch much easier as the protective layer is much thinner). I found a 1080p version of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (extended edition) on Usenet and both discs were a total of 24GB. A dual layer HD-DVD will be 30GB (vs. 50GB for blue-ray) which still allows another 6GB of useless information on a disc.



So why should I care about another 26GB of unused space on a disc for a 4+ hour 1080p DVD movie?



Sony has mis-managed their legacy of proprietary formats as they try to control the pricing on them; I will not spend $50 on a movie- no matter how good it is or how many �features� you through in.



Sony tried to release pre-recorded music on mini-disc for $25 each (with DRM, of course)- I think I saw about 20 albums before this was dropped. How are the UMD movies for the PSP selling? Perhaps I should add in the Betamax, DAT and the Memorystick?



If Sony's form hold true, this format will me much more expensive to make/sell, it will have extreme usage limitations, it will not be user friendly, and Sony will support it for the next year but continue to push the format for the next decade. Other companies behind the format will support the product for a time but migrate to the other format as Sony demands high licensing fees to cover their research costs/greed.



I believe that Sony makes proprietary formats in an effort to control the media and content and generate income based on format licensing for themselves- but they have fallen on their face with this strategy every single time. Unless they make some major changes this will continue to happen again and again; their technology is usually cutting edge when it comes out and this last for about a year- and then it is just overpriced old technology.



Time will tell and I will see if BlueRay catches on or if there are a lot of disgruntled owners of BlueRay players this time next year with no media to play in them as everyone but Sony has jumped ship for the cheaper HD-DVD format.

[hmurchison @ Jan 4th 2006 10:12AM]

Jeff



You're not going to see Blu Ray cracked. In addition to 128-bit AACS encryption you also have BD+ and ROM Mark. The keys are revocable and your player model can be shut down if you attempt to hack the device via firmware changes.



Blu Ray isn't going to be cracked for years.

[Pip @ Jan 4th 2006 11:00AM]

I give it a month before it is cracked.

[pixelate @ Jan 4th 2006 11:05AM]

i stopped buying DVD's months ago in anticipation of this. it'd be like hoarding audio cassettes before CDs were released.



it's a shame that HD broadcasts look much better on my 1080p display than any of my movies... not for long though. fantastic four, yeah, don't ask me, but i certainly intend to replace my favorite titles with the blu-ray versions. don't offer an opinion on this unless you've seen the picture difference (a modern progressive scan DVD player vs high definition programming). it's :O

[doubtful @ Jan 4th 2006 11:05AM]

"You're not going to see Blu Ray cracked."



I can't believe people still bother to say things like this. It's like a beacon to hackers pulsing in the night. As long as there is a demand for it, they will supply it.



I'm all for playing the waiting game. How much will players cost? Over $1000? And don't mention the PS3 because the reality of that is it will be a year or more before it is out.



What about the discs, $40, $50? If Sony's handling of the PSP media is any clue (1/4 the content for 2x the price) then I wouldn't be shocked to see BRDs for $50.



I'm sorry but that kind of expense isn't worth it to me, and I'm sure most other people. It'll take more than a few videophiles to make a format stick.

[Denton @ Jan 4th 2006 11:19AM]

Blah blah, all this talk about DRM and copyright. As if they're conspiring to not make it play. Sony's not doing so well in the same markets they once dominated, they're not going to alienate their customers any more than they have.

[Denton @ Jan 4th 2006 11:23AM]

#18 Actually, there is some truth to the original statement. It will be a bitch to crack. Hell, look at the Xbox 360, despite all the advanced hackers are supposedly making, a friend of mine who made some of the first headway into hacking the thing says progress isn't as far as they'd (the uber hackers) like you to believe.

[Peter Sills @ Jan 4th 2006 11:43AM]

BD and HD DVD are being promoted by the studios and by the manufacturers primarily due to the fact that they have "lost control" over the existing DVD marketplace. I have a 120" 1080p projector and show both HD content and upscaled DVDs. While I notice a difference, many do not - or do not care, as DVDs look extremely good at this size. The person who stated that this is a bigger jump than from VHS to DVD is smoking dope - and not taking into account noise, colorspace, jitter, etc. all inherent in analog VHS. Let me state that unless you have thrown down for a really tremendous set, you will see little difference in picture quality from DVD to either of the HD formats.



The studios want to eliminate DVDs from the market as they have been broken (their perspective) for some time. This has NOTHING to do with better picture quality and serving the consumer marketplace.



Lastly, BD and HD will be MUCH harder to crack than DVDs (which were cracked BTW only through the leaking of proprietary information). However, they WILL be cracked - the only issue is when, and is it long enough for the CE companies and Hollywood to then move to a new format.

[hmurchison @ Jan 4th 2006 11:51AM]

Brother are some of you guys clueless about cryptography.



How long did it take a bunch of people running their computers all day and night to crack RC5? Months and that wasn't even close to being 128-bit. As anyone with more than a passing interest in computers knows that for every bit you add to encryption you make it "exponentially" harder to crack.



stop....I know what you're going to say. What about DVD and DVD Jon. He didn't crack shite...he snooped around and found an unhidden key for DeCSS that a manufacturer blew. This is NOT going to happen in Blu Ray. Keys are revocable, attempts to hack your Blu Ray device will shut your player down. Plus you have BD+ (look up SPDC) and ROM Mark to shut down most pirates.



Better yet go here http://www.giantstepsmts.com/DRM%20Watch/spdc.htm



and read a bit about the DRM in Blu Ray before you go spouting off about stuff being cracked in a month with not a modicum of knowledge.

[Jeff @ Jan 4th 2006 2:01PM]

"This is NOT going to happen in Blu Ray. Keys are revocable, attempts to hack your Blu Ray device will shut your player down. Plus you have BD+ (look up SPDC) and ROM Mark to shut down most pirates."



Repeat after me - DATA IS DATA.



That is your mantra from now on.



It doesn't matter what you do to try to protect it. Hear me? IT DOESN'T MATTER. It is a fundamental truth, as much as 2+2=4. A 1 and a 0 on a disc is a 1 and a 0 on a disc. And anything that can be engineered can also be reverse-engineered.



You can believe what you want, but the fact of the matter is YOU CANNOT PROTECT DATA. If I have that data in my physical possession, I can access it. The only way to protect data is to keep it out of my possession, like any other physical object.



Again, these are fundamental truths. DRM *cannot* work. And if you believe Managed Copy is going to work, then you're falling into the same trap that the CSS guys did originally. So what if DVD Jon worked from a leaked key? That's like saying Watergate wouldn't have been an issue if only nobody had gotten caught. Well, duh - shit happens, and it'll happen again. Some Taiwanese company will release a hack-friendly BD player and say "oops!" once they're caught (like Apex did with the first region-free DVD players), and then the whole house of cards will come falling down. And if it doesn't happen that way, it'll happen some other way.



All that needs to happen to utterly defeat the DRM scheme in BD is for someone to make an HDCP-compliant HDMI PC interface (or HDMI to some other digital input) and then capture that data as it's being written to disc. It doesn't even have to happen on the BD player end. Then you just stream a disc to your PC and you're freakin' done - it's copied. And no changing keys in the player are gonna stop that.



Heck, ANALOG capture from component outputs would be good enough - that's how most people watch HD now anyway. PC's aren't fast enough for that now but they sure will be within the next 5 years. No, you wouldn't have a bit-perfect copy, but you'd still have a high-def one.



There is no way to stop it. None. Get it through your thick skull. If people want to do it, they will figure out a way to do it.

[Jacob @ Jan 4th 2006 3:07PM]

ummmm, Jeff, the previous poster(s) didn't say it will be impossible, they said it will either take a very loooong time or the info will be leaked. Or, by the time it is cracked, the Hollywood will say we need a new next gen format. Oh, and doesn't HDCP require a key or some code in order for it to work, and in order to get the key, you need permission from the MPAA? They won't allow HDMI capture cards at all. PERIOD.

Get it through your thick skull, IT'S NOT GOING TO BE EASY OR FAST, and given this is Sony, they will probably infect your computer with rootkits if you even touch a Blu ray disc.

Anyway, Hd-dvd's will be cheaper, will have less crap DRM, and you won't be at the mercy of Sony (they'll probably find a way to sue you if you hack blu ray, you are circumventing copyright protection schemes anyway) And whether or not blu ray has more capacity, the picture quality will be the same. That's all that matters. (and DVD's will more or less continue to be the format du jour for a long time anyway, so I don't quite expect any of these formats to *win* anyway)

[Ray Morris @ Jan 4th 2006 3:24PM]

I don't worry about copying any discs, I've always bought standard DVDs and that's good enough.



I agree with #21; anybody 'seeing' a big diference between 1920x1080 and 720x480 is dreaming. The human eye can only see so much detail, maybe an eagle's eye might tell! Look at people and the I-Pod, UMD discs ect. they're happy with that terrible resolution!



We already have 1920x1080 Rez WMV discs and though, if you look real, real close you can tell an improvement in clarity. But most people we show them to don't see a diference at all.



I also think you can have 'too much quality' even on standard DVDS. Now we can see very clearly Mary Ann's moustache on Gilligans Island, along with Gilligan's perpetual 5:00 shadow and the warts all over the Skipper's neck. We see tons of grime, dirt and scratches in the house June Cleaver is 'always' cleaning!

Even on the "Wizard Of Oz"'s latest digitaly improved edition we see the 'graininess' of the film.



Like I say, a few picky people will buy them, but they will never become mainstream. Standard DVDs will be here till HVDs come on!

[EatingPie @ Jan 4th 2006 4:23PM]

#10. Your copy of Fifth Element is NULL Packet Stripped, and as such is not ATSC standard. It will not play on a lot of set-top-box devices, though certainly it will on a computer.



The original file was over 15GB IIRC, but I'm not at home so I don't have my copy to check.



A good quality movie -- meaning no macroblocking -- requires much more than 9GB in MPEG2. Indeed, some of the best MPEG2 TS HD transfers clock in at near 20GB.



Better hope they go onto the Blu-Ray, because going smaller gets pretty dicey with artifacts.



-Pie

[EdZ @ Jan 4th 2006 6:43PM]

Yeah, it was packet-stripped, but still pretty acceptable quality (better than my DVD version most certainly).





As for DRM, you have both the encrypted data and the key in your posession (the key is in the player, else you wouldn't be able to see the movie). No system like that will EVER be secure. The concept of DRM is fundamentally flawed in that way. You can use the most complicated encryption methods you want, but as long as the unencrypted output is eventually given to you, the encryption can be nullified. And lets not forget that once PC Blu-Ray drives arrive it'll be easy to extrack the video directly, either from the disc or the frame buffer.



HDCP? Don't make me laugh, there are already at least 5 devices I know of that are available for about $250 that strip signals of HDCP and either convert to DVI, VGA, or component. And I know at least one uses a commercial key, so even with key revocation a lot of sets will then cease to function and cause a very big furore. And one of the newer ones strips HDCP in a different way (an exploit in how the keys are created IIRC), so key-revocation will have no effect.

[Jacob @ Jan 4th 2006 7:21PM]

Edz,



care to give us a link about these HDCP stuff?

Also about pcs, do you just go in the disc folder and copy and paste :)

I'm pretty sure they will make your life hell if you even try to crack it, but at least you have managed copy with hd dvd, far less restrictive

anyway, this is just too much effort. I hope hd dvd wins, sony is the worst company to trust anything to

[eric @ Jan 4th 2006 10:41PM]

None of these are movies I've consider buying or certainly buying again. I dunno, I just can't get excited about another format to replace DVD.

[EdZ @ Jan 5th 2006 7:31AM]

HDCP strippers:

http://221.169.10.62/external_dvi.htm

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=277151

http://www.spatz-tech.de/spatz/dvi_magic.htm

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-1-OPHIT-DVI-SWITCHER-SWITCH-SELECTOR-DMS-R201-HDCP_W0QQitemZ5801681596QQcategoryZ294QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/4-1-OPHIT-DVI-SWITCHER-SWITCH-SELECTOR-DMS-R401-HDCP_W0QQitemZ5799815364QQcategoryZ109015QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-1-OPHIT-DVI-SWITCHER-SWITCH-SELECTOR-DMS-R201-HDCP_W0QQitemZ5846742755QQcategoryZ14962QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem



Short paper on insecurity in HDCP:

http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/crypto-research/hdcp/irwin.html

[1080P @ Jan 18th 2006 10:18PM]

Going off the huge improvement that DVHS tape is for both video quality, and sometimes audio quality over dvd.
B/R should be that much better at 1080p on a 1080p pj.

Lord of the rings extended edition with 8 channels of lossless auduio....will not fit on an had dvd....only B/R.
Only B/R players will up scale sd dvd to 1080p...and B/R has by far the majority studio support , as well as hardware support.

90% studio support for B/R and only 39% for hd dvd.

Winner.....B/R.

[1080P @ Jan 18th 2006 10:18PM]

Going off the huge improvement that DVHS tape is for both video quality, and sometimes audio quality over dvd.
B/R should be that much better at 1080p on a 1080p pj.

Lord of the rings extended edition with 8 channels of lossless auduio....will not fit on an hd dvd....only B/R.
Only B/R players will up scale sd dvd to 1080p...and B/R has by far the majority studio support , as well as hardware support.

90% studio support for B/R and only 39% for hd dvd.

Winner.....B/R.