I love this site but.... [Archive]

zeroprobe

4th July 2007, 15:35

The constant digs at blu-ray and spin in hd-dvds favour is getting a bit much.

Come on doom9 you must know deep down blu-ray has this war won. There are just a few pockets of resistance still making noise for the hd-dvd camp, this site included.

From a DRM and region coding point hd-dvd wins hands down, but I would rather take blu-rays advantages over that anyday. Also disney/fox will never cave into releasing movies on hd-dvd with only AACS as there protection. So it's either a blu-ray win or both formats will fail.

I doubt BD+ will be successful for very long so we don't have to be scared that we won't be able to backup our movies. It is there just to make it harder for joe public to do.

50gb dual layer discs and protective surfaces, yes please.

sysKin

4th July 2007, 15:53

Hmmm a member of the public *defending* Sony? Now I've seen everything.

mitsubishi

4th July 2007, 16:00

Hmm, I can't say I've really noticed a bias, I've been for the Blu-ray since day one, but I more want the three things for the data element (capacity, read/write speed & reliability). Things are still pretty early in the consumer availability though and I'm not buying a drive until they are cheaper (I don't do 'consumer devices', self built HTPC only for me) so I'll see in another 6 months..

Hmmm a member of the public *defending* Sony? Now I've seen everything.

Yeah I have to agree here though, Sony used to be cool, but since the rootkit crap and then charging more for the inferior European PS3's they've got some sucking up to do.

sysKin

4th July 2007, 16:42

Yeah I have to agree here though, Sony used to be cool, but since the rootkit crap and then charging more for the inferior European PS3's they've got some sucking up to do.

For me they were cool until I bought their Hi-minidisc. Not only their sonicstage software is ridden with strange processes that auto-restart each other when killed, but it also loads some low-level kernel driver, even in safe mode. Not to mention it's a POC.

Oh and until they released some updates, I was considered a thief for transferring my own microphone recordings to my own PC.

foxyshadis

4th July 2007, 17:14

A top title such as Warner Bros.' "The Departed," which was out in both formats, shipped 85,000 copies in Blu-ray and 60,000 in HD DVD, compared with 7.7 million for regular DVDs.
Not seeing the winner here, when neither format has even 1% of the market. (That's still double what both formats sold 4 months ago.) The post-holiday results will probably show the first significant leads, or signal the doom of the HD format, one way or another.

Revgen

4th July 2007, 18:44

Blu-Ray discs are incredibly sensitive as far as I've heard. People have reported not being able to play a disc when even the slightest bit of dust gets on it. HD-DVD's don't have these problems.

I personally like HD-DVD for now for many reasons. Not liking Sony is the least of them.

Doom9

4th July 2007, 19:18

Also disney/fox will never cave into releasing movies on hd-dvd with only AACS as there protection. So it's either a blu-ray win or both formats will fail.That's where you have fallen for the Blu-ray FUD. It ain't so!! And yes, I can provide the shining example why studios go where the money is if their personal preference doesn't work out: DIVX.
Fox used to be DIVX exclusive.
Disney was infamous for their very lackluster DVD committment.. you could get new released day and date with DIVX and even get some of their animation work on DIVX but nothing the like for DVD.
Fox and MGM are joined at the hip so it's not surprising that MGM goes where Fox goes.
And why is Sony in the other camp today? They aren't from their point of view. Before DVD was created, there were two competing formats as well - but the players managed to settle for a single format and Sony had some stakes in that format. Today, Sony has stakes in Blu-ray so they go for the format that makes them money on the hardware side.

And don't be fooled by 50gigs = better quality. The sheer number of BD-25 titles (and how many of them are MPEG-2 again?) should give you an indicator, just how much you can expect on the average movie.

I doubt BD+ will be successful for very longI hope you are right on this, but that's way too much of a gamble with my rights as legitimate buyer - without BackupHDDVD and what followed, I'd still be a HD holdout. Maybe Joe Average doesn't care until the point where they've already already bent over to pick up the soap, but YOU!! should care seeing that one of the main reasons there's a site called Doom9 is that somebody cared that customers not be screwed over.

chongy5

4th July 2007, 19:56

I personally like HD-DVD for now for many reasons. Not liking Sony is the least of them.

:goodpost:

zeroprobe

4th July 2007, 21:50

There is a major difference between DVD and DivX than there is Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Everyone hated with passion DivX and it's whole Pay Per Play system. Disney and Fox jumped ship that time beause they had no choice. The enthusiasts already picked a winner and that was DVD.

This time it's more of an equal game with both offering similar experiences. I think smallville is already taking advantage of blu-ray offering the series on 4 discs rather than 5 for hd-dvd.

Also R&B films I think it is have upped the bitrate on the blu-ray of one of there films. Taking advantage of the storage space. The whole web enabled features of hd-dvd is overrated imo. I think it is a FAD which will fade out. Download new trailers and subtitles!!!! whooo they should already put them on the disc to begin with.

HyperHacker

4th July 2007, 21:50

Bigger capacity doesn't mean better quality. I keep hearing HD-DVD movies look better. I've seen in-store comparisons of Blu-ray to DVD and couldn't spot a difference.

prOnorama

4th July 2007, 22:01

So it's either a blu-ray win or both formats will fail.

Personally I don't care if both formats fail and another (hopefully consumer friendly) format emerges and "wins the battle" :)

I'll see in a few years which format will take over DVD and that's the one I'll probably adopt (read: the one that will be dominant or exclusively available in rental stores). My guess is DVD is here to stay along side a new HD format for many years to come.

zeroprobe

4th July 2007, 22:15

Personally I don't care if both formats fail and another (hopefully consumer friendly) format emerges and "wins the battle" :)

I'll see in a few years which format will take over DVD and that's the one I'll probably adopt (read: the one that will be dominant or exclusively available in rental stores). My guess is DVD is here to stay along side a new HD format for many years to come.

I Don't think you will see a consumer friendly format as the studios will not push this. They want to protect their movies so a new friendly format would not be an option.

dragongodz

4th July 2007, 23:43

Not seeing the winner here

i do ... DVD FTW. ;)

My guess is DVD is here to stay along side a new HD format for many years to come.

i agree. the fact is these new formats actually bring very little new for the customer. dvd brought multiple selectable audio languages, selectable subtitles, the ability to not only have extras(some vhs had an extra after the movie) but watchable right away(instread of having to fast forward to find it), interactive content etc etc etc.

these new formats bring what again ? "better" picture for hi-def tvs ? BAH! i dont see them flying off the shelves here either.

Doobie

5th July 2007, 00:17

I doubt BD+ will be successful for very long so we don't have to be scared that we won't be able to backup our movies. It is there just to make it harder for joe public to do.

BD+ will never be defeated.

The reason is because it can use practically endless complex schemes (AACS uses only one simple scheme). It uses a virtual machine that executes code with can do anything conceivable to protect content from being copied. At best, a lot of labor will be needed break each scheme one by one. But, there simply is not enough hacker labor around to break more than a small percentage of the schemes. Publishers can also release titles under various schemes, even unique schemes, so if someone breaks the protection on their disk, their break might not work on your disk, even if its the same title.

Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory, a very popular game, was out over a year before being cracked, after lots of effort. BD+ is that times ten! Imagine if every movie took a year of community effort to crack, there wouldn't be many movies cracked. Chaos Theory actually has relatively weak protection because it has to work on hardware not designed for copy protection.

I know never to say never, but I'm trying to make a point.

Bigmango

5th July 2007, 00:18

Bigger capacity doesn't mean better quality. I keep hearing HD-DVD movies look better.

That's uninformed FUD. It's true for some of the first BDs released in 2006, but it has nothing to do with "Blu-Ray".

You are not comparing HDDVD and Blu-Ray, you are comparing MPEG4 and MPEG2. Just like saying apples look better than oranges.

While most of the HDDVD movies have been using VC1 from the beginning, some of the first Blu-Ray movies that were released in 2006 were still using MPEG2. This is what happened in your example.

Since then the Blu-Ray releases are now almost always encoded in AVC and VC1.

Really, apart from the few movies that were first released in mpeg2 when the format was launched there is no difference in quality between HDDVD and Blu-Ray at the same size as both formats are using the same encoders (VC1, AVC).

So assuming that the studio is doing a correct job with its encode and that you are using a display big enough to see a difference, a quality difference can only happen (in favor of Blu-Ray and not HDDVD) with longer movies encoded at a higher bitrate; this means if the movie is taking more than the HDDVD 30Gb.

For instance, the Casino Royale movie (AVC) is taking 32Gb on the BD disc, once you add the extras and trailers the complete disc takes more than 40Gb. As HDDVD can hold max 30Gb, in this example it would need a lower bitrate to fit on the disc. And there are of course many movies that are longer than Casino Royale.

Imho the real question here is: do you really see a difference on your 42" screen if a 3-4h AVC movie takes 25Gb or 45Gb using a higher bitrate ?

The average joe (= the mass market) just watching a movie probably doesn't care as much as the enthusiast making backups of his movies who is concerned about "source" quality.

Zach

5th July 2007, 02:57

That's uninformed FUD.

“FUD” Has Become Meaningless (http://www.freaknation.com/news/oped/fud-meaningless.php)

:p

sysKin

5th July 2007, 08:32

BD+ will never be defeated.

The reason is because it can use practically endless complex schemes (AACS uses only one simple scheme).

Um, that's a complete BS. It doesn't matter how complex the VM code is, it's still executable code and all you have to do is execute it to access the disc.

If a player can do that, then your PC can do that too.

The VM code can be as complex as you want, but the code itself is still protected by a simple, single encryption, definitely not more complex than AACS. A single encryption key, when found, will access the VM code on all discs released so far, and the result is identical to current AACS situation.

zeroprobe

5th July 2007, 10:03

If blu-ray becomes mainstream it will be the Number 1 target to hack, with all the most talented working on it.

Doom9

5th July 2007, 19:42

@Bigmango: you should know better than to stick out your head again.. last time I almost cut it off and I haven't forgotten. You still cannot bring the answers I asked for before. And you should realize that for episodic stuff, disc size only matters for the studios (different packaging and cost) - you won't get

There is a major difference between DVD and DivX than there is Blu-ray and HD-DVD.Not really.. anybody who seriously cares about their rights as a consumer hates Blu-ray with just as much passion. Anybody who sees Sony's business practice should hate Blu-ray with the utmost passion.. Sony is to the consumer electronics industry what the MPAA is to movies - pure evil. Rootkits, corrupt DVDs, killing off useful software, exploding batteries, you name it..
And in both cases, studios tried to push a more heavily protected format to the detriment of the user - it cannot get more similar than that. I hope that the EU probe will reveal just how much evil is going on behind the scenes.

P.S. If the Blu-ray camp was really concerned about having enough space, anybody care to elaborate why they picked the most wasteful container? If Blu-ray has adequate error correction, what's the reason for using a format designed to cope with transmission errors?

Regarding BD-25 vs BD-50, why not simply take a look at the release numbers:
From the first of July till the end of August, there are 13 BD-50 and 5 BD-25 titles (I discounted all the non movie titles since there the size per disc just results in a number of discs) - that's 72%
From April 1st until the end of June there were 41 BD-40 and 15 BD-25 titles. That's 73% double layer. And the last BD-25 MPEG2 title (I didn't pay a lot of attention to codecs.. but I think Dreamgirls was an MPEG-2 BD-50 release) was released just a little over two months ago (http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/secretwindow.html) - and by Sony. I guess I should have counted the released by format neutral studios, as those have yet to manage to release a Blu-ray disc that outshines its HD DVD counterpart.

The VM code can be as complex as you want, but the code itself is still protected by a simple, single encryption, definitely not more complex than AACS. A single encryption key, when found, will access the VM code on all discs released so far, and the result is identical to current AACS situation.have you seen the specs? I figure it'll come down to whether it's economically practicable to using different means of protecting content - if you have a different scheme per title, it'll become a major pain to liberate discs. If, however, they stick to using the same scheme for a number of months, we have a situation not unlike we have today with AACS.

setarip_old

5th July 2007, 20:04

@Doom9

Hi!Sony is to the consumer electronics industry what the MPAA is to movies - pure evil.Although I'm certainly no fan of SONY's behavior regarding those of us who wish to protect our DVD investments and similar - Surely, you're not referring to ALL aspects of SONY - as there is certainly nothing that is "pure evil" about SONY's continuing product innovation (whether ultimately successful or not)...

FishTank

5th July 2007, 22:20

@setarip_old..

sony could invent a 50 tb disc with a warrently of 50 years and
a price of 10 cents and i still wouldnt buy it.

screw sony, never, never, never again will i spend 1 cent on any
of their products. no matter how good it is!

as for hddvd/bd. i dont like either of them and i dont care whois
gonna win if any.
btw. IF bd is better, that doesnt mean it'll win. beta-max was
better as vhs aswell and lost.

setarip_old

5th July 2007, 22:41

@FishTank

Since you've addressed me:

Your stated personal purchasing decisions in no way alter the accuracy of the postings to this thread made by either "Doom9" or me.

BTW - If in fact:sony could invent a 50 tb disc with a warrently of 50 years and
a price of 10 cents and i still wouldnt buy it.I'd suggest that, despite the similar protestations of others, you might find yourself to be the only person on Earth to be without such a product ;>}

Doom9

5th July 2007, 22:52

Surely, you're not referring to ALL aspects of SONY - as there is certainly nothing that is "pure evil" about SONY's continuing product innovationLet's just say that just because the MPAA member studios can and do make good films (at least some time), that doesn't mean we should forget that they're constantly trying to screw us over - and leave it at that.

setarip_old

5th July 2007, 23:00

Quite right! ;>}

FishTank

6th July 2007, 00:27

@FishTank

Since you've addressed me:

Your stated personal purchasing decisions in no way alter the accuracy of the postings to this thread made by either "Doom9" or me.

i never intended to alter them. i only added my 02 about sony
which was the subject of your post in a bit of a defending manner (imho).

BTW - If in fact:I'd suggest that, despite the similar protestations of others, you might find yourself to be the only person on Earth to be without such a product ;>}

being different isnt necessarily a bad thing =)

prOnorama

6th July 2007, 00:49

screw sony, never, never, never again will i spend 1 cent on any of their products. no matter how good it is!

Sony is huge. If you'd ban all their products you would not be able to see many interesting movies. I mean they own Columbia TriStar & MGM now, not the smallest of studios ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment

or their music division;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_Music_Entertainment

Maybe you need to check your CD/DVD collection again to see if it's "clean" :P

PS: of course it's easy to not buy generic hardware from Sony, because there are other manufacturers to buy a TV, DVD player, console etc. from.

FishTank

6th July 2007, 00:59

lol yeah im aware of that.
i watch those movies on tv, i just dont buy columbia dvds and
tbh i havent seen a tristar/mgm dvd i wanted to buy in ages.

i do own sony products, a lot of them. 20 grand worth probably.
they used to be great, but now its a different story (and has been for the last umm 10 years).

lets not forget though that this was about hddvd/bd :)
didnt mean to make this topic into a sony rant.

Doobie

6th July 2007, 04:32

Um, that's a complete BS. It doesn't matter how complex the VM code is, it's still executable code and all you have to do is execute it to access the disc.

Then why did it take hackers over a year to break Chaos Theory?

sysKin

6th July 2007, 05:10

have you seen the specs? I figure it'll come down to whether it's economically practicable to using different means of protecting content - if you have a different scheme per title, it'll become a major pain to liberate discs. If, however, they stick to using the same scheme for a number of months, we have a situation not unlike we have today with AACS.

Well no I haven't seen the specs. But the VM code must be decodable right? And once it's decoded, you just run it..

In fact if we're lucky, you can just grab the VM code from memory of existing software players.

The situation doesn't change...

The best thing BD can achieve is making the VM specifications hidden and well-convoluted, possibly including some complex and strange encryption functions. But this is possible for a standalone product (say, a game), not so much for a standard usable by hardware and software vendors around the world.

If this was hardware only, they *could* be distributing secret VM chips (or at least IP core) but software players can't use them. In the end, making specs secret won't work.

Shinigami-Sama

6th July 2007, 05:34

Then why did it take hackers over a year to break Chaos Theory?

because games don't hold hacker's interests as well as huge name things like movies?

and I also have to agree with syskin here, in the end we'll get a hold of specs some time or another, hell I bet they'll be posted(most likely illegally) within a month. So we'll see where this goes. I've been here long enough to know that some things can literally change overnight.

HyperHacker

6th July 2007, 09:18

“FUD” Has Become Meaningless (http://www.freaknation.com/news/oped/fud-meaningless.php)

:pUm, that's a complete BS. It doesn't matter how complex the VM code is, it's still executable code and all you have to do is execute it to access the disc.

If a player can do that, then your PC can do that too.

The VM code can be as complex as you want, but the code itself is still protected by a simple, single encryption, definitely not more complex than AACS. A single encryption key, when found, will access the VM code on all discs released so far, and the result is identical to current AACS situation.anybody who seriously cares about their rights as a consumer hates Blu-ray with just as much passion. Anybody who sees Sony's business practice should hate Blu-ray with the utmost passion.. Sony is to the consumer electronics industry what the MPAA is to movies - pure evil. Rootkits, corrupt DVDs, killing off useful software, exploding batteries, you name it..Now these guys have the right idea. I think BD+ is a hilarious idea. Encrypt the video, and include the code to decrypt it on the disc! :rolleyes: Kinda like leaving your keys in the lock on the front door...

Inventive Software

6th July 2007, 09:58

Oh, so THAT's what BD+ is.... now I'm safe in the knowledge that both formats are easily breakable for mainstream viewing! :D

HyperHacker

7th July 2007, 05:15

Just thought I'd mention something interesting I saw in a store today. HD-DVD and Blu-ray copies of Happy Feet. The HD-DVD version was ~$10 more but had a French soundtrack, better sound (IIRC, 5.1 vs 2.0), and could also be played (at 480p of course) in standard DVD players.

Interesting thought too, HD-DVD/DVD combo discs could effectively be 49GB HD-DVDs. 2 HD-DVD layers, and then 2 DVD layers, all containing one HD-DVD movie. I wonder if this is feasible?

For that matter if they can pack 2 HD-DVD layers and a DVD layer in, why can't they have 3 HD-DVD layers? Or can combo discs not be dual-layered?

foxyshadis

7th July 2007, 09:07

3-layer HD-DVD was demo'd and standardized a few months ago, at 51GB (3x17GB), but still may not ever come into production. No one's been willing to make official statements of compatibility, which might mean "not compatible at all" - and who wants to be forced to buy v2 equipment.

If you tried to add a regular DVD side with HD content, you'd have to flip it over to get to it, something people aren't fond of midway through a movie. Not a bad idea for the extras, though. It's concievably perfectly possible to have SD and HD extras on the same side; the DVD player would just ignore the HD crud. Now that would be kind of cool, if a bit pointless without the whole movie. (Unless you could cram movie, extras, and HD extras into a DVD-5.)

I don't think anyone's announced DVD-30 + DVD-9, I don't know if any labs are even trying. Unless that's how Happy Feet is? I thought only DVD-5 bonding was possible currently, but I'm not sure.

PuzZLeR

8th July 2007, 20:01

being different isnt necessarily a bad thing =)

They can laugh at us because we are different. But we can laugh at them because they are all the same...
:sly:

Doobie

9th July 2007, 05:25

The best thing BD can achieve is making the VM specifications hidden and well-convoluted, possibly including some complex and strange encryption functions.

Imagine if they eventually are able to give each disk an unique protection scheme. Each disk will use a different key and the key for each disk will be hidden differently. Imagine if in a few years they don't support any software player that has less than VISTA memory security with HDCP output.

sysKin

9th July 2007, 05:36

Imagine if they eventually are able to give each disk an unique protection scheme. Each disk will use a different key and the key for each disk will be hidden differently. Well imagine the cost ;) but my point is, even if all discs use completely different encryption scheme, the scheme itself must be decodable by players. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to decode it. The scheme itself will most likely be encrypted *exactly* like current movies are encrypted, with some secret key.

As there was no problems finding a device key with current movies, there won't be a problem finding a corresponding key for new movies.

Summary:
BD: a secret key which you need to know to open a movie
BD+: a secret key which you need to know to open very complex (unguessable and potentially unique) instructions. Instructions tell you how to open a movie.

Imagine if in a few years they don't support any software player that has less than VISTA memory security with HDCP output.

Heh good luck with that! Personally I can only imagine corporation execs to be so dumbfolded to believe this can ever work. Anyway, you only need the key defeated once, from any source (including numerous firmware updates that will have to appear for BD+ to work).

Doobie

9th July 2007, 20:23

Heh good luck with that! Personally I can only imagine corporation execs to be so dumbfolded to believe this can ever work. Anyway, you only need the key defeated once, from any source (including numerous firmware updates that will have to appear for BD+ to work).

The cost of unique keys and unique hiding places wouldn't be so costly with an automated process.

After a few years with people upgrading, the industry wouldn't have too much problem with not supporting such things as pre-VISA windows and non-HDCP monitors. Blu-ray disks should be able to patch both hardware players as well as software players (or, otherwise require frequent updates of the software player to work).

So, I can't be at all confident that we'll ever have a reasonably easy ability to backup blu-ray as we do DVD. That leaves downloading movies someone else managed to copy. I doubt this will ever be above DVD quality (bandwidth issues and ripping at the down-converted resolution). But, for me, downloading is not an acceptable alternative. And, there will be the less popular (with the hacker crowd) movies that never get shared.

mitsubishi

9th July 2007, 20:45

That leaves downloading movies someone else managed to copy. I doubt this will ever be above DVD quality (bandwidth issues and ripping at the down-converted resolution)

:confused:

People are already sharing full unrecompressed discs, even recompressed 720p version are far higher quality than DVDs

ricardo.santos

9th July 2007, 23:17

....I hope that the EU probe will reveal just how much evil is going on behind the scenes....

Well here's something interesting, does anyone have a link?

Thanks

Edit:Found it, interesting, untill theres a way of backing up either format disks for personal use, i wont be buying anything from them. Not being able to backup disks legally bought is a big factor for me, both formats are already expensive.

In a few years time im coming home with my recently purchased copy of LOST season 6 on either format. I leave the disk on the table and without realizing my nephew opened it and scratched it, my only solution is to buy a new one because i cant backup it up, im staying with dvd untill it lasts