Is "3X DVD" HD DVD's secret weapon against Blu-ray?
By Richard Lawler 
posted February 19th 2007 12:54PM
posted February 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
no wonder you hide behind another name, you're the biggest dumb*** here... *LMFAO*
"MORE studio support ...Hmm, I wonder why, maybe it's because Sony owns most of them, moron again!"
So Sony owns Buena Vista, Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox, Warner, Paramount? yeah thought so dumb***.
"MORE contents ...Yes, the average consumer will spend 10's of hours on one video"
I was referring to more Blu-ray movies out there then HD-DVD.
"MORE support around the world ...Oh yes, Austrailia is important in deciding the global market."
Atleast 90% of the players in Japan are Blu-ray. The war has already won there. UK, Australia, Asia, ... are favoring Blu-ray. Blu-ray is leading in the US at the moment. so YES Blu-ray is winning support from around the world.
You REALLY need to open up your eyes fanboy because you are seriously blinded...
Hiding behind my name? My real name happens to be Steve as well but I prefer Steven since one syllable names tend to sound childish to me.
Sony owned: Columbia, Tristar, Sony Pictures, Screen Gems, Triumph Films, Destination Films, and now MGM, United Artists, etc.
Paramount is on the verge on being owned by Sony, as well as Bueno Vista since Sony has major stock in Disney. Ok, dumb***.
It's a good thing that Japanese polls show how UNpopular the Blu-Ray format is, look it up. So I guess unpopular means at least 90% in your vocab. In mine it means less than 50%, and you think the war is won there...hmm.
Whatever you believe or dig up in some blog, I guess your willing to accept the misfortune of not only being wrong in the end but also selling your last bit of integrity to stoop to my level of badgering.
Again, what am I a fanboy of? I presented the facts of Sony's arrogance, deception, brute force marketing, and misleading marketing ploys to get their products into homes. Because you have a blind bias to Blu-ray from Sony's marketing, that makes YOU the fanboy.
Lol Sonykiller; you are a complete idiot. You ask what you are a fanboy of? You are a Fanboy of Sony Bashing, HD-DVD format, and/or Microsoft. Otherwise why would you be commenting on these blogs with so much hate in your words. The funniest thing is you do not relize it yourself.
And also show us facts where SONY is buying Buena Vista and Paramount? You honestly think Disney will give up one of it's largest cash cows? Need links to show proof of this. And other people have mention this more about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, not SONY. And why are you hating SONY so much for doing everything in their power to win this format war. Do you know wjat that is called? It is called business. Microsoft does the same thing. EA does the same thing, Apple did the same thing, AT&T does the same thing, Verizon does the same thing. All these companies are very large corp that will do heavy advertising to sell their product. If it was Toshiba or Microsoft would you be singing the same tune as you do now? You act as if SONY is the only company that has a closet when actually every company has a closet and some are much bigger than SONY's and for you to go on such an angry streak to even post on a blog with the name "sonykiller" show you either have no life or no common since of tehw orld none as business. So if this what has to be done for Blu-Ray to win and im on the board of BDA, I would be all for it. The HD-DVD camp have been similar things you know? They are just so small that the things they do do not make as large of a splash as the Blu-Ray camp.
As for the world comment; even if their have been some internet polls (I swear everything has a negative poll nowadays so I do not even count internet polls anymore) Blu-Ray has not been liked; it still doesnt defer the fact that Blu-Ray holds over 90% of HD markey share in Japan and soon Australia will follow suit soon with large retailers stating that they will only support Blu-Ray. Europe has giving more support for Blu-Ray over HD-DVD and that will kick in even more during March with the PlayStation 3 launches over their. And Blu-Ray is finally winning the home-front here in the US.
So if you break everything down it leaves with the one hardcore fact. It is not that SONY is doing to much and forcing the consumer hand to win this format war; it is that the HD-DVD camp is not doing enough to counter the pushes the BDA are doing. It makes you wonder who really wants to win this.
I see Toshiba calling it quits on their format by the summer of 2008. They are the primary company losing the most during format war while their main two allies, Micrososft and Universal, would have nothing to lose if they migrated over to Blu Ray are started releasing products for both formats.
you are both gay
Who here thinks 1080p is the better resolution???? Who here thinks 1080p is the only way to go??? For those of you who raised their hand for the first question cool. For those of you that raised their hand to the second questions, well I can only assume that you are also one of the individuals that believes all TV's are created equal. All TV's look the same if the Screen has the same resolution.
Keep in mind some of the best performing TV's on the Market are still 720p sets. These sets offer all around better picture performance then other 1080p sets. Fujitsu and Runco are two examples. Hands down these two companies TV's look better then 98% of 1080p sets. Granted both companies will be releasing their own 1080p sets.
Just keep an open mind. Don't fall the Its a higher number so it must be better mentality.
Just cause some one says 1080p resolution is higher, it doesnt make it better. Your TVs processor, video filter, and power supply play roles in how your overall picture looks.
720p is still a sold performance point. The point that 3x is making is that we will see DVD's at HD level performance for little to no change in price over current DVD prices. Think about it.
Standard DVD discs encoded with 720p HD resolution, at little to no extra cost to develop. That means instead of pay $20 + for an HD Disc. WE can now potentially see movies as little as $10.
I think that this news could be a huge ace in the hole for HD-DVD (sub $20 HDDVDs), but is it too little, too late? And I don't want any a**holes replying with "BR is better because I said so," crap.
Unfortunately, I don't think studios are planning on releasing in this format, my understanding is that this is for home consumer usage, not commercial releases. Either way, I don't know if we'll see a big price difference. Granted, Hi-Def discs of either format cost more than DVDs, but no more than a couple of bucks each.
(Hypothetically speaking) If the studio is making $20 on a Hi-Def disc release that costs $2 to manufacture and retailing for $25 (at $5 profit to retailer), they can't release the same movie on 3xDVD for $15. At a manufacturing cost of 10 cents, with $5 profit to retailers, the studio would only get $9.90 instead of $18. And all this for the exact same market since a next-gen player is required to play the 3xDVDs.
One of the reasons you see such large discounts on DVDs is that large retailers will sell them at a loss to get you in the store. This is successful with DVDs because there is such a huge market since almost everyone has a DVD player. The Hi-Def market is much smaller for now, so there is less incentive to sell the movies at a loss, especially since generally speaking the owners of Hi-Def players are big shoppers anyway.
Even if retailers were willing to take a loss on Hi-Def disc sales, this mentality would apply to next-gen discs as well as 3xDVDs, so you're still looking at a minimal price difference between HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and 3xDVD.
Ultimately it's not worth it to retailers or studios to have to worry about manufacturing and stocking two types of discs to the exact same market (whereas stocking DVDs, HD-DVDs, and BDs might be a pain, at least they are ultimately looking at different markets).
I feel it's a smart way of keeping the HD-DVD format in the game , how long it will remain is yet to be seen. As far as Sony's Brute force , last I checked no one ever put a gun to my head and forced me to buy a PS3 , come to think about it ,this is in fact the first time I'll pick up a 360 before a PS3 and believe me it's not the player , games is the deciding factor for me and many others. I know I never pulled a game out to look at the disc it's recorded on so why talk trash ,so what if it's HD-DVD or Blue Ray what matters is the content your enjoying . The fact that it cost more to manufacture , or Sony gettings rich (omg) doesn't stop the fact that were always gonna drop cash on unecessary stuff regardless how much it cost and there are other companies proffeting more from BD than Sony.
Consider this, for the past several weeks Best Buy has been running BOGOs on BR discs, and all their new release next-gen discs are marked down. They've also given away discs with the purchase of a next-gen player. I think there would be huge incentive for studios to use this format because it costs nothing extra to do so: an entire DVD mastering facility can be converted to do HDDVD for free. This could be huge for HDDVD, but only time will tell.
Do i smell desperation?
Blu-ray has easily won. Last time i checked they were winning in sales; 3:1
I dislike that the politics of Sony vs. Toshiba etc. is the primary discussion around the HD vs BD format war... for me it comes down to some basic logic about video quality and compression level.
MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 are both capable of fitting an entire HD movie onto a current 9 GB DVD, but the quality goes down greatly as the compression level is increased. MPEG-4 has a higher potential quality at an equal file size, but both are capable of producing stunning quality.
For example, I can easily see this difference between the two disk version of 'The lord of the Rings" and the same movie offered on a sing DVD disk. This is because the compression setting is much higher on the single disk version (so that it can fit on the disk).
IMO the consumer concept of HD is fictitious; the number of pixels does not define what is/isn't HD. The quality of the picture defines content as SD, HD, or somewhere in between.
1) There is a direct relationship with size of the storage medium and the quality of the content.
2) HD-DVD discs can store 15 GB (13.97 GiB) on each layer
- Dual layer capacity of 30 GB (27.94 GiB)
- Toshiba has developed a 3 layer 51 GB (47.5 GiB) HD-DVD disk (WILL NOT PLAY IN CURRENT HD-DVD PLAYERS)
- 17 GB (15.93 GiB) per layer
3) Blu-ray Disc can store 25 GB (23.3 GiB) on each layer.
- Dual layer capacity of 50 GB (46.6 GiB)
- TDK has developed a 6 layer 200 GB (183.3 GiB) Blu-ray disk (WILL NOT PLAY IN CURRENT Blu-Ray PLAYERS)
- 33.3 GB (31.0 GiB) per layer
Based on the technical specifications of capacity, I'm backing the Blu-Ray technology and planning on buying a PS-3 this year as my Blu-Ray player.
yay, downgraded movies!
What I do not understand is WHY can you not take a 3X-DVD and play it in a standard PC DVD drive? (I dont care about standalone players. One can build a HTPC for $200 and it can do a whole lot more than just play DVDs!)
I'm talking PC DVD drives here! They need to come up with a way to cheaply integrate 3X-DVD technology into a standard garden variety $20 DVD drive. Maybe it will end up costing $40? LOL. But there is absolutely no reason IN HELL to pay $500+ for any DVD player. It is absurd. All you need is more processing muscle for the decoding, and a bit more money for the crap DRM fees. RIGHT? What reason is there to need a blue laser and $500 worth of hardware if all you're interested in is 720p? If we can get 720p NOW, on existing hardware, with little modification, at little extra cost, then what the hell is going on? LOL. Why does a few people's desire for 1080p have to drag us all down to 480p? Does that make any sense at all?
What are they NOT understanding about this? This format war has totally ruined the video market. You can go and buy an HDTV AND an HD camera for a couple grand, and you can make all the HD movies you want, but you can't share them because both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are rediculously expensive. There is NO need for a blue laser.
Let me say that again.
There is NO NEED for a blue laser. There never was. There wont be such a need for many years to come. Not for the mainstream. forcing the majority of us to sit and wait at 480p like this is a scam, and that is a fact, whether you're an idiot blu-ray fanboi, or an idiot hd-dvd fanboi!