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Disney - Blu-ray's Fair Weather Friend 138

Posted by Zonk from the pick-a-side dept.
An anonymous reader writes "One day they're out, the next day they're in. Back in March, Disney CEO Bob Iger seemed to indicate that his company (which has exclusively backed Blu-ray since the start of the high-def format war) was on the verge of supporting *both* high-def formats. What a difference a couple of months of good press for Blu-ray makes: this week, the CEO reversed his earlier position, saying 'the single greatest thing we can do right now is to not waffle, but to be very, very blunt about it, (and) to continue our support of Blu-ray because we sense a real advantage.'"
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Disney - Blu-ray's Fair Weather Friend More

Disney - Blu-ray's Fair Weather Friend

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  • Poll (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What's better...

    HD DVD [impoll.net]
    Blu-Ray [impoll.net]

    • Re:Poll (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @09:51AM (#19095351) Homepage
      This poll is flawed anyway, because it's not absolutely clear that clicking on one automatically casts a vote. I clicked both to see what they were about, and discovered that I'd already "voted" for HD-DVD. FWIW, I don't know either way, so I wouldn't have voted at all.
  • Disney's largest shareholder probably gave Iger a bollocking. After all, Apple is on the blue ray Association Board of Directors [apple.com].

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 )
      After all, Apple is on the blue ray Association Board of Directors.

      Yeah, what's up with that? Could anybody explain? One minute Apple is crying [slashdot.org] from the rooftops [slashdot.org] that DRM is bad, the next they're totally supporting a format that's laden [wikipedia.org] with it (even moreso than HD-DVD). Why couldn't they just not express a preference at all...?

      • Re:Disney's largest shareholder.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Threni ( 635302 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @05:57AM (#19094401)
        All this stuff is about money, not principles. You shouldn't expect the suits to understand how stuff works (encryption, laser frequency etc) - just about whether or not this will make more money than that. If Disney turns something down, and later a better offer is made, there's no concept of loss of face, just the possibility of reduced profits.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by numbski ( 515011 ) *
          More to the point - when dealing with storage media, you really shouldn't have to be thinking encryption. What we see right now is idiocy. With exception of niche applications (DOD type stuff), encryption will be a software thing. I shouldn't have to worry when buying a hard drive whether my mainboard supports DRM type a, b, or c. Floppies, CDR's that were DRM'ed would have tanked. Now DVD's....well, but the time most of us were in a position to care, it had been cracked. Right out of the gate however

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rtb61 ( 674572 )
            It is far more about marketing and what product will sell and what will become the betamax of high definition. Face it HD-DVD has had the M$ uncool kiss of death, just by M$ being it's most ardent supporter, regardless of what Blu-ray does, the undesirability of the 'Micro-Softies' pretty much kills any consumer grade product.

            Add to that Vista (FU)DRM and M$'s well known anti-consumer attitudes and HD-DVD has in reality already become the betamax of the 21st century, it's going to become a product that's

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's not hard to see a difference between music DRM and movie DRM--as Jobs pointed out, anybody can go buy music on a CD that has no DRM. However, a commercial DVD has built-in DRM that is illegal to circumvent. Shitty situation, sure, but that's reality. Also, the experience of a song as a unit of culture is quite separate from consuming movies: smaller time commitment, small file size, enjoyable virtually anywhere via an iPod.

        Ha, captcha 'cultural'
    • And Apple has been shipping HD DVD authroing and (very limited) playback for Macs for two years now, without having every shipped or announced anything related to Blu-ray.

  • Blu Ray could be improved... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12, 2007 @01:42AM (#19093673)
    By requiring the player to phone home before playing the content. This would give customers better products and shareholder more confidence when trading technology and entertainment stocks. One can only hope.

  • Whatever... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cptgrudge ( 177113 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @01:42AM (#19093675) Journal

    My media server doesn't care what kind of "optical disc" Disney backs.

    • Just give me a 150 megabit internet connection already, and to hell with trying to tie data to clunky physical mediums.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        150Mb/s is a bit more than you'd need, considering that BluRay and HD-DVD have a maximum throughput (for video) of about 30Mb/s. DVD is about 10Mb/s. Considering the rate at which network bandwidth is increasing, I expect the average home Internet connection to be faster than either of the 'next generation' formats by the time they have widespread deployment. Even mobile services are likely to be offering far more than that kind of speed within a decade.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kijori ( 897770 )
          The big problem of course will be the bandwidth available to the distributing servers, since peer-to-peer is by nature non-sequential.While bandwidth to homes increases rapidly year-on-year, the bandwidth available to servers is much more expensive to increase.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by debest ( 471937 )
          And yet with today's internet connections getting faster, the amount of data that you're allowed to actually *use* is not going up by the same proportion. Consumers with "unlimited" accounts are getting their service scaled back when they overuse their service. Imagine how many more people will be in this predicament once HiDef movies start getting streamed down.

          Speed is only half the equation: if ISPs don't stop chopping their customers down for using their services, there will be customers who pay for a

      • Re:Whatever... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @06:51AM (#19094515) Homepage

        Just give me a 150 megabit internet connection already, and to hell with trying to tie data to clunky physical mediums.
        Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of DVDs...

  • Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DRM (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Whuffo ( 1043790 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @01:44AM (#19093681) Homepage Journal
    Seems strange that this announcement comes so shortly after an AACS key was spread all over the internet; it seems that HD-DVD's protection is pretty well beyond defending now. It's not totally broken yet, but the writing is on the wall.

    Blu-Ray has additional copy protection in addition to AACS, so any media mogul who is depending on DRM to protect his profits would naturally be waving the Blu-Ray banner at this point.

    Of course, Blu-Ray will have all of its protections defeated too - it's just a matter of time.

    • Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dch24 ( 904899 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @02:10AM (#19093753) Journal
      I was thinking the exact same thing as I read the transcript in the article. Bob Iger talks about Consumer Electronics support. I saw that as doublespeak for "Microsoft: you just got burned bad with the XBox360 HDDVD player firmware vulnerabilities." I agree - HDDVD's protection is totally broken.

      The PS3 is a little harder to crack. I know it'll happen, but for someone like Iger, being able to push Microsoft around is probably the stuff of his dreams. I'm sure he doesn't care about the other HDDVD partners, and dual-format players will just make it easier for media houses to produce their content. Like you say, Whuffo, The writing is on the wall.

      Microsoft has lost another battle.

      • Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ClosedSource ( 238333 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @02:21AM (#19093777)
        I don't see how this qualifies as "pushing MS around". The success of the XBox360 and MS isn't really based on whether movie studios support the HDDVD's, but the PS3 and Sony's fortunes are heavily dependent on studios supporting Blu-ray since they are taking a loss on the units to promote it.
        • I've heard this enough times, but I still don't buy it. Aside from what movie studios do, there's perfectly valid reasons for Sony to back the Blu-Ray format (ie 4.7GB just doesn't cut it anymore, and nobody wants to go back to the PSX solution of multiple discs). Granted, that makes the PS3 an overpriced electronic toy, but what electronic toy isn't?
          • Of course HDDVD has a lot more capacity than 4.7GB too, so there was a lower-priced option available if higher capacity for the PS3 was the only issue. What's interesting about the PS3 is that it is both overpriced and loses money anyway.
          • Not to nitpick but commercially produced DVD's are dual layer, and have about double that capacity, roughly 8.5GB. It's not anywhere close to HD-DVD / BluRay, but I doubt that game makers have problems with these constraints for this generation. Gears of War certainly doesn't, and it looks better than anything on the PS3 as yet.

            • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

              by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @06:53AM (#19094525)
              Comment removed based on user account deletion

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Afecks ( 899057 )
                There's something this guy failed to mention, maybe because it completely blows his argument out of the water. But for people like me that have been gaming for a long time, we know the answer.

                Mutli-Disc games. Yes that's right, Final Fantasy did it, so did many other games.

                Sure you've got to put a lot of redundant data in there but acting like you're limited to 1 disc per game is a straw man argument. Need more space? Add more discs. Simple.

                • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                  by ryanw ( 131814 )

                  There's something this guy failed to mention, maybe because it completely blows his argument out of the water. But for people like me that have been gaming for a long time, we know the answer.

                  Mutli-Disc games. Yes that's right, Final Fantasy did it, so did many other games.

                  Sure you've got to put a lot of redundant data in there but acting like you're limited to 1 disc per game is a straw man argument. Need more space? Add more discs. Simple.

                  Something you've forgotten is that when trying to "make money" you want to keep costs down. One of the most expensive costs is manufacturing and packaging. If you are stuck to multi-disc distribution for your game you will be eating profits because you couldn't squeeze it into one disc. I'd imagine the company FUNDING the game would rather make the mpegs a little more gritty and the sound quality more compressed rather than expand to a second or third disc.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Afecks ( 899057 )
                    Did you really just compare the cost of a single Blu-Ray disc to multiple DVDs and try to imply that DVD costs more? Perhaps, in 10 years. Until then, the cost vs. size argument is weak at best. Add to it the fact that most consoles are moving towards hard-drive-based and I predict in the future console games will be more and more like PC games. They will install just the game engine or the entire game directly to the hard drive. Then they would be free to stream the cut scenes directly from the disc. As fo

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Castar ( 67188 )
                  You're overlooking a big problem with multi-disc games, and that's diminishing returns. For multi-disc games, the shared assets need to be on every disc - that means the main character models, weapon models, explosion textures, common level textures, and so forth. So by adding a second DVD-9, you don't actually gain 9GB of space. As your game grows larger, the amount of common material will approach the size of a single disc, and adding more discs will not get you anything.

                  Not to mention that gamers these d

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Afecks ( 899057 )
                    You're overlooking a big problem with multi-disc games

                    I did no such thing. I said "you've got to put a lot of redundant data in there". I don't see how that's overlooking it when I specifically mention it.

                    As your game grows larger, the amount of common material will approach the size of a single disc

                    Wrong. The limit of shared data is whatever you can fit on a single layer (4.7GB). It has nothing to do with the number of discs and no way would a game need that much shared data anyways. The shared

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Rinikusu ( 28164 )
                /* There's no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That's why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle. */

                Just a nitpick but...

                He forgot to include "good game" in things

        • Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:5, Interesting)

          by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @04:53AM (#19094245)
          since they are taking a loss on the units to promote it

          If they make a loss on an $600 unit which is crippled compared to a PC, it's one of the worst corporate inefficiencies in today's world. For the same price, you can buy a used car, pay a rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in many parts of the country, get a decent desktop from Dell or feed 100 children in India for a month. Don't tell me 100 parents can not assemble one playstation 3 in a month.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Don't tell me 100 parents can not assemble one playstation 3 in a month
            2 problems.

            1.) Given the parts, I doubt they could assemble it.
            2.) I doubt much of the cost comes from assembly.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kjella ( 173770 )
            If they make a loss on an $600 unit which is crippled compared to a PC (...) Don't tell me 100 parents can not assemble one playstation 3 in a month.

            Assembly of a custom built (mostly, component pick nor random parts) computer is around $50-70 here in one of the most expensive first-world countries around. Assembly line production in a cheap country should come out to almost nothing. But if you want to put in a Quad Extreme, a GF8800 and other expensive components it'll still cost in the thousands. Can your

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jez9999 ( 618189 )
        I agree - HDDVD's protection is totally broken.

        So it's now significantly better for the consumer?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

        The PS3 is a little harder to crack.

        The only reason it hasn't been yet cracked is because they have yet to even USE it. No blu-ray disc to date (AFAIK) has actually used the extra "layer" of protection. I suspect that if they started using it and if blu-ray ever came down in price enough for hackers to bother, it would no doubt be cracked just as easily as AACS.

    • Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:4, Informative)

      by alphamugwump ( 918799 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @04:33AM (#19094183)
      Get with the picture. The only real difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is the frequency of the laser, and thus, the density of the bits on the disk. AFAIK the encryption for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are just different enough to be incompatible. They were both "broken" pretty much simultaneously. However, all AACSLA has to do to "close" the hole is to change their keys, leading to a new cycle of cat-and mouse. AACS is no more broken than RSA; they just lost their key.

      Blu-Ray has some extra stuff like BD+, which allows the player execute arbitrary code to search for debuggers, patch the player, install rootkits, and so on. Blu-Ray also has something called ROM Watermarking. However, I gather that these thing are just another annoyance, and not a serious problem.

      No, as someone else said, this is probably political. Disney is associated with Jobs Who is associated with Apple, and Apple backs Blu-Ray. Their just digging their trenches deeper.

      • Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:5, Informative)

        by LordVader717 ( 888547 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @05:30AM (#19094337)
        Just to nitpick: The laser frequency is the same, a blue 405 nm wavelength.
        • Just to nitpick: The laser frequency is the same, a blue 405 nm wavelength.

          So when Sony is complaining about their capability to ship due to blue laser shortages while HD-DVD players are leaving on boats en-masse, they're just full of it, or they negotiated poor contracts?
          • The main problem has been with the PS3, which, despite lacklustre sales, still blows any stand-alone HD-DVD player away, at least in numbers shipped.
      • I would suggest there is one potentially very significant difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD which is "BD-J" -- to quote Wikipedia...

        "BD-J, or Blu-ray Disc Java, is the interactive platform supporting advanced content for Blu-ray Disc. BD-J allows bonus content on Blu-ray Disc titles to be far more sophisticated than bonus content provided by standard DVD, including network access... and access to local storage." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J [wikipedia.org]

        AFAIK HD-DVD doesn't have anything like this (please
      • As far as I know no discs have used this for copy protection yet, but it was part of Sony's marketing strategy to claim that BD+ [wikipedia.org] was an extra layer of security. I saw people on doom9 claiming that it doesn't really add anything they can't get around, but since it hasn't been implemented yet, it hasn't been broken yet. Which means that sony can argue with the other studios that they have stronger copy protection than HD-DVD.

  • I Don't Get It (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mr Jazzizle ( 896331 )
    What's the advantage of supporting Just one of the formats? What's in it for Disney to diss HDDVD?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Doctor_Jest ( 688315 ) *
      I guess Disney wants to stack the deck in favor of their "preferred" format. (Not wanting to back a losing horse, so to speak... as they've done in the past...) I really don't care if Disney puts their drek on edible undie flavored discs... Disney is a non-starter in my book. I truthfully don't buy enough movies for them to care what I think, and I've pretty much grown ever-so-tired of the "sticky floor/bratty snot/laser pointer/cell ringers" atmosphere theaters have wrought. So, in the grand scheme of t

      • Re:I Don't Get It (Score:5, Interesting)

        by qbwiz ( 87077 ) * <john@baumanfamily.c3.1415926om minus pi> on Saturday May 12, 2007 @03:00AM (#19093893) Homepage
        Really, they should support the format they think's going to lose. Then, if that format loses before anyone really bothers to come out with dual-format players, they could sell the people who bought a copy in that format a copy in the other format as well.
        • You know... that seems evil enough for Disney to pull off... but I dunno, I wonder if their PR wouldn't take a nasty hit in the short term...

          Of course, when they backed Divx (the evil one), it didn't work out quite as well as they'd have hoped... people just didn't buy their tripe... (I would suspect Disney selling the same movies ...and more... over in Europe and Japan on DVD with more features had something to do with it....)

          I'm sure we're going to see more waffling as the formats ebb and flow towards the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rts008 ( 812749 )
        "Yeah, I'm a digital packrat... :P"
        I hear ya'.

        I gave up trying to backup with optical media- with the price of harddrives, it's worked out better for me just to convert older PC's into file servers on my network so I can make redundant backups of stuff I don't want lost.

        Most of the time it's much easier to format and re-install or mess with triple and quad boot systems.
        As an added bonus, as I upgrade the PC's on my network, the fileservers either get upgraded or added to.

        With the uncertainty of how long opt

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        I don't bloody well care, because it'll be a few years before we can get 80GB backup discs, at least at a reasonable price... And by then, my system disk will have grown too large (yet again) for a "single disk" backup. ;)

        With the recent trend of games putting savegames in "my savegames" under "my documents", I've found that you can install games to a non-system disk since you can simply reinstall them if you lose the system disk. Also of course all your media can go on another disk, so can a lot of other b

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by FateStayNight ( 1000465 )
      saves costs. No need to author and publish in two different types, encode in two formats, stock two skus of each movie, create additional covers and booklets etc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BrerBear ( 8338 )
      Easy. The existence of a format war is holding people back from buying either BD or HD-DVD until there is a winner. I know many such people.

      Helping to end the format war and greatly increase the overall HD market would be much more beneficial than selling a few thousand HD-DVD discs now. Yes, the volumes are that low.

      Not to mention the overhead costs of supporting a second format.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

        Easy. The existence of a format war is holding people back from buying either BD or HD-DVD until there is a winner. I know many such people.

        For me, it is a lack of a compelling title on either format now, and what known titles that may compel me in the future are slated to be available in both formats.

        However, I am closer to the HD-DVD camp because I bought the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive for use with my desktop computers, and not the expensive Blu-Ray burner from Sony. The included copy of King Kong is my only

  • HD-DVD's are better for consumers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TerraFrost ( 611855 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @02:03AM (#19093741)
    According to Template:HighDefMediaComparison [wikipedia.org] , HD-DVD's don't have any regions, whereas Blu-Ray's have three. Presumably, Hollywood executives who get off on exercising control really dislike it that HD-DVD gives them less control, thus they prefer Blu-Ray. For that same reason, you'd think consumers would prefer HD-DVD...

  • Aww, Poor Liddle Zonk Still Trying To Save HD-DVD (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So cute. Pathetic, but cute.

  • ? title ? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by smoker2 ( 750216 )
    Does the submitter know what a "Fair weather friend" is ? Because they don't appear to.

    A fair weather friend is one who is with you in the good times and against you in the bad times.

    According to the summary, Disney has been exclusively signed up to Blu-Ray from the beginning. They have never not supported Blu-Ray.
    They have never rubbished Blu-Ray, nor released any plans to withdraw their support of that format.
    So how does this make them a "Fair weather friend" ?

    If they had supported one then the other t

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Semptimilius ( 917640 )
      Well, your fair weather friend isn't necessarily against you in bad times. Just not supportive when you're in a sea of troubles. (Unless you subscribe to the "you're either with me of against me" philosophy.)

    • First of all, modding pedants up always rubs me the wrong way. I'm a pedant myself, and sometimes even a grammar nazi, but I don't expect (or even hope) that such posts of mine are modded up. I completely fail to see how someone giving their definition of a "fair-weather friend" is insightful. If I point out that fair-weather friend [m-w.com] is supposed to be hyphenated, does that make me insightful? What about if I point out that technically, only the B in Blu-ray [blu-raydisc.com] is supposed to be capitalized?

      Second of all,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )
      Its just the destruction of our language. It used to bother me as well but I have just learned to accept it. The main reason is most common phrases were just goofy coloquialisms of days gone by, and have also completly changed meaning.

      For instance:
      "Close enough for government work" when originally coined supposedly sometime in the federalist period actally meant that the job was done very well.

      Some time in the sixties when the government was precived to be inept by many it took on a new meaning entirely.
  • If Bluray ends up being the "winner" of the format war - something which won't be the case until you can get a standard player for
    MPEG2 can still look good when the source is hyper-idealized, such as in the case of Crank which was not shot on film, but this is simply not the happy case 99.9% of the time.

    Now somebody point me to the cheapest possible 24Hz-capable Bluray player, complete with price.

    (Speaking of media servers, is there one which can actually achieve 100% consistently flat framerates ove
    • Editing above: If Bluray ends up being the "winner" of the format war - something which won't be the case until you can get a standard player for sub-$300 and a 24Hz player for sub-$400, in my opinion - HD-DVD will still have served the purpose of forcing the adoption of AVC / VC1.

      MPEG2 can still look good when the source is hyper-idealized, such as in the case of Crank which was not shot on film, but this is simply not the happy case 99.9% of the time.

      Now somebody point me to the cheapest possible 24Hz

  • Do you support crap or crap? (Score:5, Informative)

    by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @04:47AM (#19094223)
    Ok, CDs and DVDs were not specifically designed for use in computers or anything besides standalone players. But what is the excuse for products introduced in 21 century? Where is support for building a library on a hard drive of a computer or DVR? Where are the computer drives that can play and record movies for a reasonable price? Where are the on-demand/online services to deliver an equivalent-quality movie over the wire? Both formats should go the way of Sony's minidisc and memory stick ATRAC players as consumers revolt and find other forms of entertainment.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by peterlynam ( 255050 )
      Transporting gigabytes of data on a small cheap plastic and metal disk is currently the most efficient form of delivering video. The answers to your questions appear to be simple economics. Until the majority of consumers have efficient/reliable 8mbps connections and huge hard drives, there is not much point to mass investment in non-DVD delivery. I have often given up on a tedious video download to walk to the nearest DVD store. Not only is there better quality and convenience, but also, after factoring in
      • My feebal attempt to come up with a better way is...

        Offer the first 10 minutes of a movie for download at a reduced price, say $1. Note that this is the first 10 minutes, not the only good 30 seconds.

        User downloads and hates it (i.e. .GE. 90% of the time) and moves on. The other 10% or less of the time they may go on to buy/rent/borrow it.

        Would beat watching trailers as a way to pre-judge a movie. Of course, then the studios would make the first 10 minutes of a movie into a ginormous trailer. [

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by iamacat ( 583406 )
        Oh well, I am not saying "download from Internet". Cable providers and DSL operators should be able to provide a fast download from a local storage device given financial incentive. As long as the download is under an hour, this beats driving to a store. But in any case, once I have a movie at home, I should be able to stream it across my local network or store it on my terabyte harddrive.
        • Cable providers have little incentive to provide downloads than to continue charging exorbitant prices for movie channels and PPV. Maybe DSL, but the big DSL players like Verizon are looking for the triple/quad play, which includes TV and the aforementioned movie and PPV channels, so don't expect them to head in that direction anytime soon either.

  • Blu-Ray Can Hold More Commercials (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joe_n_bloe ( 244407 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @05:07AM (#19094279) Homepage
    With Blu-Ray, Disney can easily put an entire hour of un-skippable high-def commercials, trailers, disclaimers, warnings, notices, and animated logos in front of every movie, even if the next Pirates of the Caribbean is 3 hours long.

    So in their shoes I'd be thinking Blu-Ray too.

  • What a difference a couple of months of good press for Blu-ray makes
    Like what?

    More likely, it's due to a couple of bad weeks for HD-DVD (security keeps getting cracked). That'd be more motivation for keeping to the other one if I was an idiot executive. Who cares if one gives a better quality video? One of them is still capable of manipulating our customers^W^W^W protecting our content.
  • Lucas. If he would release the original trilogy, nicely restored...
    - get rid of the grabage mattes around spaceships, the slugs on the emperor's face, and all the other OBVIOUS stuff they missed in the last X "restoration" attempts
    - in the highest currently possible definition (1080)
    - not the most recent "well, we had this old LaserDic master" bullshit
    - and NO (1997+) special features
    on EITHER format, I'd go buy one... maybe not tomorrow, but as soon as the players were halfway reasonable (like $200-300 or

  • I don't care which one wins (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PingXao ( 153057 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @12:12PM (#19096319)
    As long as prices fall quickly I don't give a rat's ass which format "wins". My motives are selfish. I have a bunch of old videotapes I want to archive. I thought DV was the answer, and it is to a point. But even though DV is a decent compression method, once I archived a few dozen tapes I found I was STILL reluctant to trash the old VHS/Hi-8 analog tapes.

    I want enough space on a burnable disc so I can capture all my video (all SD and all lo-fi) with a lossless scheme. Only THEN will I toss my old tapes and not give it a second thought. Then I can experiment with different codecs until the cows come home and know I didn't sacrifice anything from the originals. I'll probably only actually do that on a handfull of the recordings I have, but hey, you never know. Someday one of my grandkids-to-be might develop an intense interest in a vacation I took years ago to Wally World. More likely is that all my precious footage will end up in a landfill somewhere. Such is the life of a pack rat.
  • Wasn't Disney also behind the original Divx? (Not the codec, the failed DVD wannabe)

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