Antoine Doinel wrote:It's a bold to assume that the staff at a chain store would even know how to calibrate HD-DVD or Blu-Ray properly. In my experience, staff at chain entertainment stores know absolutely nothing about the products they are selling, let alone how to set them up properly.
Agreed, but it is even bolder to assume that the average user, the one that would need to buy into HD media for it to succeed, knows anything about setup and calibration.
Until these products work right out of the box, with zero setup/calibration their success is in doubt.
Last edited by Ted Todorov on Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
THe Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update has been released, and with it comes the ability to stream (up to 1080p) WMV videos straight from any computer connected by an ethernet cord, that is running windows. you simply have to download windows media player 11, set up the sharing, and then go connect.
I tried it this morning with some imax stuff, and I thought it would lag sending 1080i video over my ethernet port, but it was perfect, the sound was amazing. Microsoft should exploit this by offering WMV HD movie downloads at cost, since they have really good compression.
How long will it take for all the titles on standard DVD will be available on Blu-Ray/HD? I gather it will be never. I was reading in the paper today that to get the full benefit of Blu-ray discs you will need a new model plasma or high-end projection. With standard plasmas and LCD screens, the difference will be negligible.
I am not worried about whether Click or SWAT or other studio titles will be available in the HD or Blu-Ray format. I am more concerned about the arthouse titles from independent distributors who have to fork out the HD authoring costs which will prevent these titles being available in HD format except, of course, the Criterion titles, who can afford given they distribute globally (a luxury that local distributors outside of USA do not have). Besides, will people fork out to buy a HD DVD of Talladega Nights given they already have the standard DVD which would be of acceptable quality to that target audience? In the end, the people who are most concerned about the difference in picture quality are cinephiles like the people in this forum and early-adapter technophiles.
Peter Becker just posted about HD on the new Criterion blog, that Criterion are sitting out the format war. Glad that I'm finding myself in such good company
SncDthMnky wrote:I tried it this morning with some imax stuff, and I thought it would lag sending 1080i video over my ethernet port, but it was perfect, the sound was amazing. Microsoft should exploit this by offering WMV HD movie downloads at cost, since they have really good compression.
There's been talk of some sort of HD content delivery service (above and beyond the trailers and such they have now) for awhile now and this rumor is currently making the rounds. Sony's been talking up HD movie downloads for the PS3, and while I don't expect their online gaming service will match Microsoft's, they seem to be doing better with the content delivery thing -- MS isn't going to be left out.
I'm moving this over from the Criterion Blog thread. It's a follow up to another comment about the high quality of SD discs mastered in HD, which serves as the first part to my argument that the HD phenomenon will take a while to become standard:
As much as certain folks in the industry would love to see the HD format catch on immediately, I'd bet money that it'll be five years or so until it becomes a viable format. Early on I'd heard reports that the difference between a standard DVD mastered from HD and an actual HDDVD or Blu-Ray disc would be considerably less than the difference between first generation DVDs and those that are being put out now. Looking back at some of those old Fox Lorber discs, its hard to argue that point. Still, the new HD discs look great, and everyone who has them seems to love them. Although I could never argue that HD discs will have a hard time finding an audience, the concern has more to do with the size of the audience.
I'd give the numbers if I had them on hand, but I don't and the numbers game has been played out enough elsewhere that I won't feel the need to repeat it. Suffice to say, the percentage of people with HDTVs compared to those with tube TVs is still very low, despite the seemingly high volume of sales. Prices may be dropping substantially, but I'd still have to sell my mammoth DVD collection just to afford a basic HD setup, and with nuances of the economy the way they are, most Americans are in a similar situation. This wouldn't be a problem except for that earlier point I made: the new HD discs look good, but not so much so as to justify a minimum cost of $2500.
This is a major problem that the industry is facing. I spoke to a Sony rep a few months ago to see what his thoughts were, and he was a little frustrated with the whole thing. He said the licensing fees for either format's proprietary setup was upwards of $40,000 per title. Thats just a royalty charge on top of all of the inherant authoring and replication costs. Early adopting studios are selling these discs with razor-thin profit margins just so that the format will take off. As such, either the market will drop enough that prices on players and screens will have to come down to meet standard def, the high cost of manufacturing will keep the format within the niche realm of the wealthy for a while, or the cost of maintaining the technology will go unsupported and BOTH formats will collapse. Meanwhile, one of the formats will need to win out over the other if either is going to succeed.
On top of the format war that's barely even begun, the industry has to deal with its own hidden costs and several companies will be forced to push the technology at a loss for a while just to preserve the initial investment. Given that DVD sales are higher this quarter than they've been in years... some companies may not even see the HD investment as worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, HD is where everything is going eventually, but I figure five years is about how long it'll take for enough consumers to get on board to set the new standard.
It's going to be hard to convince a lot of people to make the jump. It's not like the numerous problems with VHS and laserdisc that were cleared up with DVD. It's also not as compatable, where before I just plugged in my DVD player to the 32 inch CRT I'd had for a few years already (all of a sudden a clear picture, extra material, and correct aspect ratio on a single disc or two), you really have to go all out and change your entire setup to make a big difference (better sound, higher resolution, and the latter will eventually be trumped by a 4k-line-of-code exact replication of the film itself). I'm not a "techy" type, and I hate spending money on equipment that I could be spending seeing unusual and interesting films, so the move to HD is one of the last things on my slate right now. By the time the Criterion people get around to dealing with it, if they do, I'll probably have an interest as well.
You are absolutely correct in everything you've said, but some of the information is a bit misleading. I'm in favor of HDDVD winning simply because of the technical tidbit you mentioned: Changing one $15 part in factory DVD replicators makes them capable of replicating HDDVDs, while Blu-Ray replicators would need to be brand new. I had heard early on that Sony would be charging a substantial fee just for the use of their format, but discovered later that studios interested in HDDVD would be charged the same fee. So while technically the costs should be low, its that $40,000 per title licensing fee that makes it all so gosh-darn expensive. Obviously the fees are to amortize the developmental costs, but since HD discs have roughly the same SRP as SD discs... its the studios that don't own the format that have to absorb the costs of the new technology, not the creators or consumers. Until this fee goes away or diminishes, studios will have to suck it up, which I think will have a negative impact on the industry.
The upside to this, is that although the technology is (again, at my estimation) 5 years (about as long as DVDs took, as you mentioned) away from being worthwhile to mainstream middle-class consumers, the studios will need to work really hard with us in mind to convince us to take the leap and invest in the format with them. By the time I decide to invest in an HD setup and start buying HD discs, TVs should be $500 or so, players under $100 and special features will be mastered in HD as well. We will see some major benefits to this whole mess in a few years, but the industry will suffer a bit first.
In the meantime, Criterion will make a fortune off of SD DVDs from me, and I'm more than happy to oblige them.
I can imagine Sony charging a $40,000 licensing fee, but not the same for HD-DVD surely? Would Studio Canal be releasing an HD-DVD of L'ARMEE DES OMBRES if they had to pay that kind of fee? It sounds unlikely, though I'm willing to be proved wrong. Source?
These are the high quality titles to be released soon on HD and Blu-Ray in Australia as reported in The Age today in Melbourne:
"On October 11, Sony Pictures released four Blu-ray titles into the Australian market: Hitch, S.W.A.T., Underworld: Evolution and Hostel. Today it releases another five titles - 50 First Dates, Into the Blue, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Tears of the Sun and RV - while on December 6 it will release Click and XXX.
Fantastic Four, Kiss of the Dragon and The Transporter are being introduced on Blu-ray discs by 20th Century Fox on November 15, while Paramount will release Mission Impossible: III on both Blu-ray and HD DVD on November 30.
After Mission Impossible: III, the bulk of HD DVD titles will be released on December 6 by Warner Bros and Universal.
Warner Bros. will bring out Lethal Weapon 1 & 2, Full Metal Jacket, V For Vendetta, Superman Returns, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Fugitive, Unforgiven and Under Siege.
These Warner Bros titles will be released in Blu-ray format as well.
Also on December 6, Universal will have HD DVD versions of Apollo 13, Doom, King Kong, Serenity, Jarhead, Van Helsing and The Bourne Supremacy."
I don't see any Antonioni, Fellini, Ozu, Kurosawa, Bergman or Bresson titles there. Hell, there is not even one Scorsese title!
$40k per-title license fee for HD-DVD sounds like bullshit to me. No suprise it comes from a Sony exec.
Apparently a Dual-Layer HD-DVD glass master costs $5k, combo discs cost a dime or 2 more to replicate per disc than SD-DVDs. Adding $5 to the price of the SD-DVD release and releasing combo discs would recoup the extra costs with 1000 titles sold. Depending on what the actual license fee is, then on a film which sells 5000 titles which I assume is about an average for popular Criterions, should make it's money back.
edit: According to DVD FLLC HD DVD, the license fee for HD-DVD is the same as DVD, and appears to indicate that a DVD/HD-DVD license is the same, so if that's true releasing a combo disc would incur no additional licensing cost and Criterion are just being pussies.
Last edited by Artois on Wed Nov 08, 2006 2:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
Artois wrote:Sorry but $40k per-title license fee for HD-DVD is bullshit. What do you expect a Sony employee to say other than that it's the same for both formats.
Apparently a Dual-Layer HD-DVD glass master costs $5k, combo discs cost a dime or 2 more to replicate per disc than SD-DVDs. Adding $5 to the price of the SD-DVD release and releasing combo discs would recoup the extra costs with 1000 titles sold. So Criterion are just being pussies, If they could sell 660 laserdiscs (at $99 each?) to break even then they sure as fuck can sell 1000 SD-DVD's with a $5 HD-DVD attached.
Bullshit you say? Produce a lot of DVDs?
$40K is a significant figure in that it isn't all that much in relationship to big-studio production costs, but enormous compared to indie studio costs. I understood that the licensing fees were a measure to protect the brand identity of the format by ensuring that all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray release were high-profile films from high-profile studios.
My formula for sales projections/goals when I was in distribution was too take the dollar amount paid for to license the film (referred to as the minimum guarentee of royaltees) and diveide it in half. That was the number we had to hit to break even (so a $50,000 film would need to sell 25,000 copies). This factored in our standard, single disc production costs. Anything extra (like the costs of digipaks, second discs, or HD format licensing) would be re-applied to the base figure to determine how many extra copies we would have to see at the same price to break even on the decision. Although HD format costs would only add about $50K, 25,000 is a lot of extra DVDs to sell just to make the same money. For a big studio, 25,000 extra copies is a lot easier. For a company like Criterion, even through the SRP is higher, they spend a lot more money on creating masters rather than purchasing them like most indie studios do.
I'm not saying Criterion COULDN'T go for the format (Peter Becker has already explained their reasons for not doing it yet), I'm simply supporting my theory that its going to be a few years before it becomes standard.
You were writing your post as I was editing so fair enough, $40k would be prohibitive to any small independent producer, and it may well be the nail in the coffin if the porn industry (and it looks like its shaping up this way) fully embraces HD-DVD for this reason, as they were apparently instrumental in the VHS/Betmax war (and for the same reason, Sony prevented them releasing on the format).
As far as Criterion, they are already creating HD masters so that would be no extra cost to them. Re-releasing titles in HD-DVD versions would incur no extra costs (assuming DVD and HD-DVD content licensing is the same) other than the glass master and small replication increase, so I stand by my reasoning that it is completely feasible, and Criterion's fence sitting is highly dissapointing considering their history.
Viewed Mutiny on The Bounty this evening. The transfer is another stunner by Warner. I had never seen the movie before but it was very enjoyable and incredibly funny at times.
It also appears that the PS3 will not include the cables required to pass the HD signal. I wonder how many people are going to connect up with the composite cables throw in Ricky Bobby and fail to see what all the Blu Ray hype is about. Sounds like a bad move by Sony.
Looks like Sony blew it (again):
With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony's main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately.
I watched Troy and V for Vendetta in HD today and they were the best transfers I've seen yet. My father has access to some really pricey projectors so I'm going to try to get some photos of the difference between dvd and hd-dvd on a 10' screen, It should be drastic.
I have finally had a chance to mess around with my PS3 now that Black Friday Week has officially ended. Since there is only one good game for it currently, I was most curious about its BR capability. So (after forking over half a bill for f@#%ing HDMI cables that should have been included in the first place) I popped in the Taladega Nights BR disc that came with it. I have no tools to measure the difference quantitatively, but honestly the difference in picture and sound quality between BR and HD is negligible to my eyes and ears.
Also of interest, here's a blurb from an article at Gamespot.com:
We were able to play games and play Blu-ray movies at 1080p and 1080i over HDMI. Component cables allowed us to play games at 1080p, but dropped the resolution down to 1080i while playing Blu-ray movies. We also popped in a regular DVD movie to see if the PS3 could upscale the picture to HD resolution, but could only get movies to play at the standard 480p resolution. We haven't had a chance to test out the PS3 on older HDTVs that only support 1080i, but other web sites have reported that the PS3 will downgrade games to 480p on older HDTV displays that support 1080i, but not 720p.
Schkura wrote:I have finally had a chance to mess around with my PS3 now that Black Friday Week has officially ended. Since there is only one good game for it currently, I was most curious about its BR capability. So (after forking over half a bill for f@#%ing HDMI cables that should have been included in the first place)
You may want to take a look at monoprice the next time you are looking for cables. They sell good quality affordable cables. I needed a hdmi-dvi cable to connect my Toshiba HD-A1 to my TV. The cable cost less than $20 shipped and it works like a champ. I have heard nothing but praise for them on any of the boards I frequent.
