Is "3X DVD" HD DVD's secret weapon against Blu-ray?
By Richard Lawler 
posted Feb 19th 2007 12:54PM
posted Feb 19th 2007 12:54PM
While the Blu-ray camp is busy claiming victory, recently HD DVD supporters seem to be circling the wagons around an old friend, the -- 'til now -- unused 3X DVD technology. HD DVD has always claimed it holds a price advantage over Blu-ray, by way of offering low cost upgrades for existing DVD manufacturing processes. The 3X DVD spec takes that a step further, while it's a part of the HD DVD format and apparently only compatible with HD DVD players, the discs themselves are physically exactly the same as standard red-laser DVDs. Throw in a software upgrade to support high definition content, HD DVD's UDF 2.5 file structure and AACS and you have a way to deliver HDTV content on a 9.4 GB DVD. By using newer encoding technologies like MPEG-4 and VC-1 and/or lowering the resolution to say, 720p, full length movies easily fit on a standard DVD. Eclipse Data Technologies, a supplier of HD DVD mastering equipment just announced it is offering free upgrades to its customers in order to support 3X DVD manufacturing. This was followed today by DCA Inc. announcing it has mastered the first 3X DVD disc, and that several manufacturers are looking at it as a possible low cost path into HD video. 3X DVD's potential to allow for noticeably lower-priced HD content to come to market is definitely there, but it still remains to be seen if this, like combo DVD/HD DVDs and Total Hi-Def discs will find a home and support in the marketplace.Read - First 3X DVD-ROM Disc Cut with DCA Equipment
Read - Eclipse Provides Free HD DVD Upgrade to Replication Facilities
Part of the Warner Bros. acceptance of Blu-ray was the BD-9 version of Blu-ray, essentially what you just mentionned,but for Blu-ray, it's thus a moot point.
To Jeffrey: Agreed
The Blu-Ray spec had contained plans for red-laser BD-9 discs (which in fact make no sense under the name "Blu-Ray", but that's another issue).
Additionally, it wouldn't make sense that the HD-DVD camp had "exclusive" use of this new (old) technology, since the DVD forum doesn't own the physical DVD technology rights; just look at the competing DVD-R and DVD+R camps.
HD DVD, NOW WITH LOWER RESOLUTION!
How can this be good for HD DVD or for consumers?
I thought the point of HD DVD and BD was more space and dramatically higher quality? Not to mention the fact they want me to buy a new HD DVD player to play the same format of discs I am playing now in my $20 player? (at 720p instead of 480p).
720p and 1080i are essentially the same data rate, so both would fit on the 3x disk. You might have trouble fitting a full length movie at 1080p with it, but as a mass market format, that won't be an issue. You have only been able to buy 1080p capable TVs for 8 months, few are out there and by far the majority of the TVs being sold right now are 720p/1080i units.
... play the same format of discs I am playing now in my $20 player? (at 720p instead of 480p) ..."
You must have an upscaler then (probably in your DVD player), since all DVD content is interlaced 720x480i. Just upscale to 1080p from 720p then; you obviously think upscaling is worthwhile or you wouldn't be doing it now.
The Porn Industry will sort it all out... Just give it time.
Scooter
http://www.gadgetgrid.com/
Not really. Not this time. Too many factors determining that porn won't play as significant a part this time as it did back in the Betamax and VHS war. Considering the fact that it's a lot easier to just download porn and store it on HDDs, and not to mention free if you're unscrupulous, porn won't have the stronghold in the outcome. Plus, Sony has already distanced itself from the porn industry by not letting them make multiple copies on their own. Lot of factors... Read this article:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72625-0.html?tw=wn_columns_sexdrive_3
It's a weekly column I love to read. Very well written.
Not really. Not this time. Too many factors determining that porn won't play as significant a part this time as it did back in the Betamax and VHS war. Considering the fact that it's a lot easier to just download porn and store it on HDDs, and not to mention free if you're unscrupulous, porn won't have the stronghold in the outcome. Plus, Sony has already distanced itself from the porn industry by not letting them make multiple copies on their own. Lot of factors... Read this article:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72625-0.html?tw=wn_columns_sexdrive_3
It's a weekly column I love to read. Very well written.
Why settle for 720p when we can get 1080? This is a stupid thread... the technology will get cheaper and Blu-Ray players will cost $50 by Christmas next year.
HD-DVD wins!!!
Lol.. just wanted to sound like a blu-ray tard for a second... :D
In a word. NO.
This would actually make things worse not better. It would increase confusion for little benefit.
Reproduction costs for HD-DVD/Blu Ray are already under $2, so such an effort is almost pointless already.
This format is already being used.
The HD movies/shows you download from Xbox Live are VC-1 encoded at 720p.
They run about 6 gigs while the 1080p 24fps VC-1 material on HD-DVDs run upwards of 20 gigs...
Isn't this like saying, If you compress a DVD with Xvid, you can fit it on a CD?
Point is?
No. This would work in all HD DVD players. The customer wouldn't know the difference, at least for short videos. I wouldn't want to use a DVD-9-as-HD-DVD for a 2 hour blockbuster with 16 extras, but it'd be fine for say a short animated movie with no extras.
Isn't this like saying, If you compress a DVD with Xvid, you can fit it on a CD?
Point is?
ps. Then Why would I need HD-DVD then, since I already have a dvd drive.
Someone's just trying to cash in on an idea that everyone has passed on. Asian CE's were trying to sell folks on EVD (or whatever they call it), which is the same as 3X DVD, sans licensing requirements.
DVD-9 with advanced codecs still makes for overly compressed HD images. Nothing to see here, move along...
Essentially DVD9 + Mpeg4, problem is folks will still need to purchase a new system, currently Blu-ray SL and HD-DVD DL disc cost around $1.44 to manufacture DVD media, its still not expensive. It might be better to just hold off to higher capacity standards then half-ass 720p DVD9 without all the uncompressed audio and features etc.
Essentially DVD9 + Mpeg4, problem is folks will still need to purchase a new system, currently Blu-ray SL and HD-DVD DL disc cost around $1.44 to manufacture DVD media, its still not expensive. It might be better to just hold off to higher capacity standards then half-ass 720p DVD9 without all the uncompressed audio and features etc.
BD will win anyway. There's no way in heck HD-DVD can win with just one exclusive studio. There are rumors that Universal is considering going dual-format, too. That'd be the last nail in the coffin of HD-DVD. It's not a bad format technically, but with identical image quality and worse studio/industry support it has pretty low chances of winning. Would you buy into a standard if you knew you won't ever see Disney/Pixar stuff on it?
Blu-ray spec does similar, but only 9GB discs are allowed whereas HD DVD spec allows for 4.5GB ones too.
Been making these discs for ages with a regular DVD burner, i.e. making 4.5GB and 9GB 'HD DVD' format discs.
Great way to burn hour or so of 1080i or 720p or TS to HD disc format.
I can't stand the whole "compress the heck out of stuff and still call it HD" mentality. Technically you could run HD off a CD-ROM even, for a little bit. This is the same sort of stuff that had in the early 90's, only then it was VCD, fit a movie onto a CD in MPEG-1. It worked, but not very well, higher capacity is the answer. Sure H.264 is an improvement, but you can only compress something so far.
Am I the only person on Earth who sees something like an HD broadcast of a sporting event and can't help but notice the leagues of crappy compression blocks in the background? Pre-rendered stuff looks better (such as shows) but MAN, consumers put up with a lot of compression - it's like we've gone backwards from analog! HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both at least look hi-def without the compression of broadcast digital TV.
If HD-DVD wants to win it should be with content, not with 5,000 different sub-formats, triple layers, magic dust and whatever else they're doing. From TV ads it seems the majority of titles are advertised as "blu-ray disk" even Warners Bros. stuff like The Prestige and Superman (and isn't Warners a big HD-DVD supporter?)
Finally, I agree with some of the above, porn isn't the factor it once was, mostly because you couldn't exactly download it off the internet back during the last *real* format war. (Copies of Strip Poker for C64 from a BBS via CompuServe don't count). What's really gonna count are Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Disney movies. I mean, the next time Debby Does Dallas sells as many copies as Finding Nemo, please let me know.
First one with a BURNER under 200 bucks wins
I believe such a move like this would've made sense prior to the release of HD DVD & Blu-Ray had manufacturers revised the existing DVD spec to include MPEG-4 (AVC). If that were the case, we could all be watching 720p content from standard red laser DVD's on $39 players bought at Walmart right now.
Still, why do the obvious when you can push far more expensive players etc down the markets throat with HD DVD & Blu-Ray? /sarcasm
You don't need to lower the resolution. With efficient encoding, you'll get at least 60 minutes worth of high quality HD video. That's enough for pr0n (I guess) and many animated movies. But in my opinion, that's less an advantage for the already cheapy HD DVD than for BD, because that would allow making inexpensive BDs and thus lowering the average price of BD titles.
call me when they just make a reasonably-priced data drive that holds 100GB per optical disc and Hollywood has nothing to do with the standards process.
DVD, open source codecs and easy downloads laugh at Blu-Ray and HD-DVD
Even if "HD" content on plain DVD could deliver high quality images, the HD DVD format doesn't seem to have any advantage over Blu-Ray because all BD players support AVCHD, which is basically H264 on DVD (originally made for HD video from camcorders). I don't know if it supports any of the high definition audio formats such as Dolby True HD or whatever but it does support multichannel Dolby Digital and LPCM. One problem is that AVCHD might not support DRM, but it could be easily done through a firmware update, I guess.
ummmmm...I dont know about you guys...but I dont own a 9.4 GB dvd disc...They only go up to 8.5.
unless this is for HD-DVD discs...and talking about how they can fit an entire movie plus the extra's on a single layer HD-DVD disc...which is 15GB...that makes more sense.
Damn I have always thought about that, you know what if..... A 720p HD moving on a DVD.
Blue Ray is still better, it can output at 1080p while HD-DVD claims in this article to have a highest resolution of 720p. It won't be long untill most TV's sold will have all standardized on 1080.
Desperate times require desperate measures and this sure is desperate! They can't fire back at Blu Ray with sales stats because Blu Ray is ahead, it's the number 1 HD format in sales and $ revenue. HD-DVD is dead, the quicker everyone accepts that the better for us all.
The adult industry will have no bearing whatsoever on this. Good write up about it all over at TheDigitalBits.
"Well... as expected, I've received a flood of e-mails over the last day or so in response to my high-def format war comments of yesterday. And as expected, those who have firmly attached themselves to HD-DVD weren't terribly pleased with my arguments. The interesting thing, however, is that none of these people could logically refute my reasoning, and very few even attempted to do so. In fact, while some of the responses from HD-DVD supporters were polite and thoughtful, most were defensive, overly emotional or even downright hostile. A couple e-mails were so nasty that I can only wonder at the mental stability of their authors. All of this suggests to me that even these people are starting to suspect that the writing is on the wall for HD-DVD.
I was pleasantly surprised, however, at how many readers responded to say that they generally agreed with my assessment of the situation. And it wasn't just Blu-ray supporters who reacted positively. A surprising number of retailers and industry insiders expressed relief that we had finally said what they WANTED to say, but weren't in a position to do so. I was also struck by how many people that agreed with my comments said they hadn't yet adopted either format, instead having decided to remain neutral until a choice was more clear. But many of those folks told us that they were now close to jumping into the high-def arena, and Blu-ray was where they were headed. The responses as a whole were certainly fascinating, and they have done nothing but convince me further that this format war needs to end now, before the early adopter market gets even more fractious and divisive.
So what, or who, could end this format war? Simple: Universal. If Universal were to suddenly announce support for Blu-ray Disc in addition to HD-DVD, or if they were to adopt Warner's TotalHD combo disc, that would be the end of it. You would suddenly have every major studio in town releasing Blu-ray titles (except for DreamWorks, and our sources tell us that the studio is simply waiting for one of these formats to start selling serious numbers before getting involved). By the end of the year, cheaper second generation Blu-ray hardware will available, and that's the ballgame. That's not to say that Microsoft and Toshiba would stop pushing HD-DVD anytime soon. And I'm sure some of the HD-DVD supporting studios would continue releasing titles, at least for a while. But why would any average consumer want to buy an HD-DVD player, even a very cheap one, when you can't get Disney movies, you can't get Pixar films, you can't get the Bond films, you can't get the Spider-Man films, etc, etc, etc. Universal has the power to end this format war tomorrow.
While we're on the subject, here's more evidence of Blu-ray's advantage: Blu-ray almost completely dominates the Japanese market now (click here for more on that), and has a clear edge in the Australian market as well (click here). In fact, one of Australia's leading consumer electronics retailers, JB Hi-Fi, has announced that they won't even carry HD-DVD in their stores (click here). Why? Because they, like many others, simply don't see how HD-DVD can overcome the overwhelming studio support behind Blu-ray Disc. JB's marketing director, Scott Browning, put his company's position this way: "We don't want to be selling $1000 clocks." Ouch. Any way you slice it, this whole format war situation is just getting silly.
By the way, for you HD-DVD fans out there who are running around online today claiming that I'm somehow getting paid to endorse Blu-ray (rather than coming to the rather obvious logical conclusion all on my own), I'll bet you this: If, in the next few months, the HD-DVD camp suddenly gets all those Blu-ray exclusive studios to start releasing titles on their format, and if all those electronics manufacturers who have released Blu-ray players start releasing HD-DVD or combo players too, I'll will happily and publicly revise my opinion. I'll even exclude Sony on both counts. But I'm betting it isn't going to happen."