First BR recorder can't play some Blu-Ray content

[George Ellis]

This is just a brilliant strategy by Sony. They are releasing a burner that cannot play protected content. So, you can pay $750 for a writer, but don't expect to be able to use it as a player.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3744

Ever wonder why Microsoft switched over to supporting HD-DVD? Now you are starting to see the picture emerge. Sigh.

[Paulo Teixeira]

That is not why Microsoft is supporting HD-DVD. If I was Microsoft I’d support HD-DVD as well and that’s only because a lot of the HD-DVDs are using Microsoft’s codec’s. They wouldn’t make any where near as much money if they supported Blu-Ray. Also the reason why Sony helped develop Blu-Ray is because they got sick and tired of paying royalties.

This whole entire thing is about money and nothing else. Microsoft is getting money out of HD-DVD and Sony is going to make money out of Blu-Ray.

Sony will release a firmware upgrade that will allow you to play copy protected movies and I’m hoping they release it soon.

[Marvin Emms]

With titles only having the option of MPEG2 encoding currently, Sony has pretty much shot themselves in the foot with Blu-ray as a movie media. If the vanguard of the high def buying public don't recognise Blu-ray as the better quality format - and currently it isn't - what sane minds at Sony are left are better concentrating on Blu-rays strength as a storage device. If that means cutting video corners in *some* models to push start down the volume/price decrease slope then I think they are doing the right thing. Even if they are now sledding with a cast.

[George Ellis]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

That is not why Microsoft is supporting HD-DVD. If I was Microsoft I’d support HD-DVD as well and that’s only because a lot of the HD-DVDs are using Microsoft’s codec’s. They wouldn’t make any where near as much money if they supported Blu-Ray. Also the reason why Sony helped develop Blu-Ray is because they got sick and tired of paying royalties.

This whole entire thing is about money and nothing else. Microsoft is getting money out of HD-DVD and Sony is going to make money out of Blu-Ray.

Sony will release a firmware upgrade that will allow you to play copy protected movies and I’m hoping they release it soon.

Sorry, but that is not the reason. VC1 is on both formats and there is already DVD content as WMV-HD. It really is about rights management. MS took a huge hit when they added it to a Vista documentation and implemented some of it in the build (even though there was no content using it.) Blu-Ray is looking at content that will disable a player permanantly if it detects what it thinks is pirated content. Since MS is working on the Home Theater market, they, not Sony would get blamed if it went wrong. That and requiring technology for HD playback that is just reaching the market...

[Paulo Teixeira]

Microsoft did say that Blu-Ray has one extra layer of protection that it didn’t need but the fact that a lot of the HD-DVDs are using Microsoft codec is one of the top reasons for Microsoft to support it. There is nothing false about that. If the majority of Blu-Ray movies were using VC1 then you would see no complaining on Microsoft’s part.

[Zack Birlew]

Geez, I just hope both formats don't prove to be a waste of time. I don't see why we're not getting practically uncompressed HD versions of movies with all that space on Bluray discs, there can't be THAT many special features that weren't available on DVD before, assuming that they put anything extra in.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Sony did say that they will release some movies with a compression rate of 40MBPS but I’m hoping they use the H.264 codec rather than using Mpeg2. 40MBPS of H.264 will look a lot better than DVC-PRO HD.

[Marvin Emms]

It is rumored that Sony's authoring tools for Blu-ray only support MPEG2. When dual layer dics are finally released it may come down to 50G of space for MPEG2 versus 30G of space for VC1. In the short term 30G of VC1 versus 25G of MPEG2 is a nobrainer.

This could be nasty and long.

[George Ellis]

Microsoft was originally leaning towards Blu-Ray. I know this because they were saying so at their hardware conference. They were also only going to support DVD+R format for writing in Vista. If you were a developer, you would have seen the firestorm about DRM that was mostly coming from the Blu-Ray compliance. While HD-DVD has similar standards, there was no talk about rendering hardware useless. There was also less talk about strict hardware enforcement of HD content on existing hardware. MS listens to its development community and this is a result of the backlash, not some snubbing of their codec. The players will ship with the codec and they will make their 25cents per player whether the disc has it on it or not.

[Thomas Smet]

I would think that it would be much harder for multiple layers of AVC video to playback on the advanced menu structure. It is even hard to play back AVC video on it's own without overlaying graphics, text and another video keyed out on top with all of that playing.

Maybe mpeg-2 is the only way SONY can get all of this to work with the authoring structure and menus.

Does anybody have a HD-DVD player and know if it can handle this type of interactive structure with VC-1? I would think even VC-1 would take a lot of power compared to mpeg-2 when trying to fill the full HD-DVD authoring specs.

[Pierre Barberis]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

I would think even VC-1 would take a lot of power compared to mpeg-2 when trying to fill the full HD-DVD authoring specs.

Rightly so. Dual angle, PiP, etc will challenge the CPU / DSP doing it.
But , roughly speaking, you'll need twice the power for DECODING VC1 vis a vis MPEG2 at comparable quality, and - at least currently- four times for H264.

So there are a lot of tradeoffs hidden in here, and much depends upon the avail of efficient AND quality hardware decoder chips available to build the "player". TMK we are still waiting for an efficient HwDec for H264 and, IMHO, this is why HD-DVD might keep its leading edge as Sony is apparently totally reluctant or unable to go VC1.

[Marvin Emms]

Since VC1 is part of the Blu-ray spec, all players must support it anyway. It can't be a valid reason for Blu-ray discs not using it.

As for menu complexity, I can't see any theoretical problem with encoding the menu in MPEG2 and the main feature in VC1, or MPEG4p10.

[Jack Zhang]

So Blu-ray drives must have AACS circuitry to play protected discs?

Very sneaky. Might just be manufacturing or licensing costs for the burners if they had AACS circuitry.

[Lloyd Roseblade]

Doesn't AACS protection only work through HDMI???

I bet some manufacturer will produce a HDMI to VGA convertor allowing the consumer to completely by-pass the protection altogether. Of course they'll be peering at analogue and not digital, but those who watch pirated videos are used to less than stella quality, and HD over analogue is still going to look pretty damn impressive.

[Richard Leadbetter]

The human eye cannot tell the difference between analogue and digital. This is certainly the perception of most of the Toshiba HD-DVD owners out there, and it's certainly true when viewing the results of my high definition captures (I can capture from either analogue or digital and there is nothing in it).