Hexus is carrying a story on this review. It should be noted that bd dvds are encoded in mpeg2 but so far all hd dvd's that we have seen are all with vc-1. It is still not clear if Sony is going to continue to discourage the use of encoding with vc-1. It does seem to be the case that VC-1 offers higher quality encoding.
http://www.projectorcentral.com/blu-ray_2.htm
Sharyn
It seems that the reviewer was just looking to reinforce his prejudices about Blu-Ray, and used results from this 'test' to justify them.
Steve
Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and pro bably need to research for them selves.
From the US what we have personally seen is that
None of the BD titles are on dual layer BD, so they are limited to 25 gig and they are all encoded with mpeg2
All of the HD titles are on dual layer HD, have 30 gig, and are all encoded with VC-1
Having spent several days looking at the two on a variety of hd displays here in the US it is quite noticible on a side by side comparison that the HD DVD's do look better
Usuallly Ebay prices of actual sales are a pretty good indicatioin of where the market is viewing the price to market value, the Toshiba HD players are selling for a premium and the Samsung BD players are selling for a discount.
Microsoft is telling people off the record that the HD option for the XBOX 360 will be out to meet the PS3 delivery dates and will have a price point of 200 dollars.
It is our opinion that SONY is betting the farm so to speak on the PS3 with the hdmi interface is going to be a runaway success and will give it a massive base of BD players.
Currently the gaming community seems to be far less excited about the PS3 in this part of the life cycle than they were at this part of the life cycle of the PS2. Most of the buzz appears to be more focused on Nintendo's WII.
As people start to see more of the drm implimentation on the ps3 and bd they seem to get more and more nervous about it, Microsoft has been saying that bd impliments a whole additional level of drm vs hd dvd. This appears to be behind a few areas of concern,. one being that the bd writer for the pc cannot play commercial bd releases unless there is a drm supported graphics card, the other rumour flying about is that the bd spec contains the ability for the player to be disabled permanently upon deteting an illegal bd dvd. Ordinarilly we would have just dismissed this as romours but considering the drm fiasco on cd's it seems that it is not out of the realm of possibility.
Again everyone is entitled to come to their own conclusion, but certainly from a marketing case it could be argued that Sony has made several major missteps
Sharyn
On the other hand, my local "Game Station" store has already sold its entire first allocation of PS3s (taken deposits) and is expecting to sell at least two games at UKP 50 a pop with each of them. PS3 is, of course, not due to arrive here until November. Make of that what you will, but I think it agues that interest in the gaming aspects, in the UK at least, is strong.
I think it , definitely will be a very interesting situation and seeing how it unfolds will probably make for some marketing case study for years.
One aspect of the equation of course is just how much commonality is there between the ps3 gamer and the purchaser of BD dvd's. Does Sony convince the avid ps2 gamer that the ps3 is a must have, but then discover that there is very little interest in using the ps3 as the media center, and the not create the demand for BD content.
Microsoft is of course playing the game of here is your games console, and IF you want to add hd playback here is a low cost (according to the rumour mill) add on. This will allow Microsoft to continue to reduce pricing on the x box360. Sony on the other hand has the cost of the bd drive in every system, and yet based on not providing hdmi on the low end box, appears to have prevented the low end systems from being a tru bd player of commercial content.
If Sony has judged the customer correctly and the avid gamer who wants the PS3 is also the avid video enthusiast who wants to buy BD commercial releases then the gamble pays off. If on the other hand there is little overlap and most of the PS3 buyers are predominatley interested in the games, and not BD commercial content, and the video enthusiast finds hd dvd more attractive based on combo hd/sd dvd's, and player cost and drm issues etc, we could see an awkward situation. Sony keeps seemingly relying on the ps2 experience with an included dvd player capability as the model. I think the situation is very different today, In the ps2 launch days, there was only one standard for dvd, most people did not buy ps2 for its dvd playing capability, and most video enthusiasts looked at the dvd player in ps2 as being of less than stellar quality. Using one market demand for a games console to drive the bd high definition commerial content demand in a quite different market is debatable. It definitely is high stakes poker, and it will be interesting to see who wins.
Sharyn
Using one market demand for a games console to drive the bd high definition commerial content demand in a quite different market is debatable. It definitely is high stakes poker, and it will be interesting to see who wins.Sharyn
It certainly will be interesting!
I can't wait but I shan't be voting with my wallet in the early rounds. There is a perception here (UK) that PS2 helped establish DVD with a rapidity exceeding all previous format introductions. I'm not so sure. I believe it was a combination of the indisputable benefits of DVD over VHS combined with the early availability of low cost players and (relatively) quick access to a huge catalogue of material.
My kids are only now discovering the delights of being able to use PS2 as a DVD player, despite having owned one from a few months after its release. They were not remotely interested in playing anything other than games on it until very recently. Conversely, I think Microsoft may have shot themselves in the foot by not including the HD DVD drive in the X-Box 360. Not because of its movie playing abilities but simply because of the gaming possibilities opened up by the sheer capacity of Blu-ray. Games developers for PS3 know pretty much where they stand, developing for X-Box 360 is going to be a mess until it becomes clear whether HD DVD wil become a standard fitment.
We have a few close friends who are sound designers for the games industry. They work across all platforms. They have an interesting perspective. From what they have seen either the ps3 nor the x box 360 can run a complex game at 1920x1080p and get any sort of decent frame rate, everthing they have worked on is at the max 720p and that out side of just shoveling in all sorts of extra bonus stuff, nothing comes close to filling up a dual layer dvd, the largest games have been 6-7 gig. Very fiew of the games anymore want to operate with integrated footage (along the lines of the Lucas Knights of the Republic) so their view is that today hd or bd as the games distrubution is pretty much irrelevant. For copy protection it offers some added advantages. They raised an interesting point, that the concerns the games distribution channels have with BD is that the structure of the disk is such that the encoding is very close to the surface, and that since games tend to be less than carefully handled, the bd disks become unplayable due to damage very quickly. HD uses a structure similar to standard dvd's which is better. Given the experience with dvd writable issues, this could become much more of an issue than anyone would have expected.
For them on the development side of things what format it is manufactured on is of no consequence, just a cost per item, and reliability to reduce returns.
Sharyn