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Posted by Smarty on 11/14/06 07:26
Gary,
It's true that HD DVD may be a short-lived format, and the same is also true
for BluRay, since neither has really gained much traction so far. I
personally think the studios' preoccupation with copy protection combined
with the lack of a single standard format is a recipe for disaster in this
regard. It is, however, not particularly clear that HD DVD is more likely to
fail than BluRay, and, in fact, the HD DVD acceptance from what I have read
has actually been considerably greater.
BluRay burners are available today, and nominally sell for about $800. Some
Sony Vaio computers are also shipping with them internally as well. You can
author 2 hr disks today in that format and buy (overpriced) players which
will play them properly. This pattern of early adoption and high cost keeps
repeating itself over and over again, and I vividly recall buying my first
Betamax VCR for $1500 and being very glad to find one at the time. Betting
on the wrong format then (in the 1980s) and now is a toss of the dice, for
sure.
Both HD DVD and BluRay use blue lasers and special media to achieve 2 hour
recording / playback. The Toshiba / RCA players will allow red laser disks
which they also play so as to provide standard DVD compatibility, and have
the "feature" of permitting a red laser disk with an HD DVD format to be
recognized and played. Thus a 4.7 GB disk with 23 minutes (or a dual layer
46 minute red laser disk) will play properly, as will a blue laser 2 hour
disk, using the same directory and file structure (UDF 1.5 and above with
the right folders and files). It is entirely possible that the Sony BluRay
disk players (from companies like Samsung and Sony) may also play red laser
23 minute 4.7 GB disks with "BluRay HD content" as well, and I have not
personally tried this since I do not have a BluRay player here to experiment
with.
For the time being, it is useful in some situations to have a cheap way of
distributing HD material to clients, friends, etc. Since the Toshiba player
is now being sold under $400 and is likely to drop further after the
holidays, then HD DVD distribution on red laser disks is a limited but
practical solution. The alternative, handing somebody an HDV tape, is also
viable, but then requires they have an HDV camcorder or HDV tape deck to use
for playback. Both of these alternatives cost at least 3 times as much as
the Toshiba player, and have no menus or other HD DVD navigation, so using a
red laser to experiment, make demo disks, and distribute content is a
practical solution. This is just another alternative which has been mostly
underpublicized since the HDV camcorder makers never seem to mention it. I'm
sure they would much rather see people buying blue laser burners at $800 and
blank disks at 20 bucks apiece than using existing $30 burners and 20 cent
media......
Smarty
"Gary Eickmeier" <geickmei@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:qr96h.11372$sv1.5636@tornado.tampabay.rr.com...
>
>
> Smarty wrote:
>> Gary,
>>
>> Your entire investment in a system to burn HD DVDs is a standard (red
>> laser) burner for about $30 from NEC, Pioneer, Liteon, etc. plus some
>> blank disks at 20 cents apiece. Your authoring software (Ulead
>> VideoStudio 10) will cost below $100 and will also do a very nice job of
>> editing HDV video and authoring standard DVDs as well as HD DVDs. If and
>> when you should decide to buy a blue laser burner for burning HD DVD or
>> BluRay format disks, this software already supports both blue laser
>> formats so no additional investment is required except to eventually buy
>> a blue laser (HD DVD or BluRay) burner when their prices come down. This
>> would only be required if you wanted to make 2 hour HD DVDs or 2 hr
>> BluRay DVDs.
>>
>> Note that there are two incompatible HD formats for creating high
>> definition DVDs, one called BluRay, the other called HD DVD. Each will
>> require unique burner and blank disks, and therefore......you would need
>> to either commit to one format....or buy both burners and 2 different
>> style blanks if you wanted to make both BluRay and HD DVD format disks of
>> 2 hour duration.
>
> Thanks again, Smarty, but your reasoning doesn't go all the way to the
> present fork in the road.
>
> We can either purchase a Blu Ray player knowing that the burners will be
> available eventually, or go for the HD DVD player, on the hope that the
> format will last more than a year. The red laser burners and software may
> be cheap, as you say, but the HD DVD player is $500 right now.
>
> It is interesting to me that you can burn HD DVD compatible discs right
> away, but if that format dies out then the cost of the player will be down
> the drain, because the industry will no longer support that format with
> burners and software to play longer than 23 minutes.
>
> My current question would be, how can the HD DVD discs play for two hours
> if they are red laser? Just the compression scheme? So why wouldn't we be
> able to burn discs that play that long?
>
> Gary Eickmeier
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